Siegestor (Victory Arch)

Siegestor (Victory Arch) Review

Built to bookend the Feldherrnhalle and mark the end of Ludwigstrasse, Siegestor nowadays also marks the beginning of Leopoldstrasse. Unsurprisingly, it has Italian origins and was modeled on the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and was built (1849) to honor the achievements of the Bavarian army during the Wars of Liberation (1813-15) against Napoléon. It received heavy bomb damage in 1944, and at the end of the war Munich authorities decided it should be torn down for safety reasons. Major Eugene Keller, the head of the U.S. military government in the postwar city intervened and saved it. Its postwar inscription on the side facing the inner city is best translated as: "dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, a monument to peace."