Royal Gates (German: Königstor) are one of the eight surviving city gates of Kaliningrad. They are located at the intersection of Frunze Street and Litovsky Val. Since the same year, the gates have housed the Historical and Cultural Center "Great Embassy," which is a branch of the Museum of the World Ocean. The gates feature exhibitions dedicated to the origin and development of the fortress city of Königsberg, visits to Königsberg by prominent figures, and the diplomatic history of Königsberg-Kaliningrad (in particular, the visit of Peter the Great's Great Embassy to Königsberg).

The gates are built in a pseudo-Gothic style and externally resemble a small castle.

The current Royal Gates inherited their name from older gates that stood in the same location. Originally, the Kalthof Gates were located here. In 1717, they were demolished, and during Königsberg’s incorporation into Russia during the Seven Years' War, the gates at this site were rebuilt by Russian engineers. The gates were created by a team of craftsmen: the project author was General Ernst Ludwig von Aster, the facade design was handled by architect Friedrich August Stüler, and the sculptural decoration was done by Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer. The new Royal Gates were built on the site of the destroyed old ones. Their name comes from Königsstraße — the Royal Street on which they stand, and in memory of the ceremonial entries of Prussian kings from the Royal Castle to military exercises and reviews at the Devau training ground. Initially, the gates were called Gumbinnen Gates, as the road passing through them led to Gumbinnen (now Gusev).

In the late first half of the 19th century, Königsberg began modernizing its city fortifications. At that time, the old gates were demolished, and new ones were built in their place, which have survived to this day. The ceremonial laying of the new Royal Gates took place on August 30, 1843, in the presence of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and construction was completed in 1850.

By the late 19th century, the defensive structures, including the Royal Gates, had become militarily obsolete and began to hinder the city's development. In 1910, the military department recognized that these fortifications had completely lost their military significance and sold them to the city. Later, in the 20th century, the ramparts adjoining the gates on the sides were dismantled because they obstructed the increased automobile traffic. Thus, the gates became a freestanding, island structure, serving as a kind of triumphal arch.

It is unknown whether the Royal Gates were used as a defensive structure during the Soviet assault on the city in the East Prussian operation of the Great Patriotic War. At least, they are not mentioned in the chronicles of military actions or memoir literature (for example, there is no mention of fighting near the gates in the widely published Soviet collection "Storming Königsberg" or in the memoirs of the German defense commander General Otto Lasch).

After World War II, the gates were in a deplorable condition, suffering numerous damages from bombings. The sculptures and brickwork of the facades were almost completely destroyed. The through passage through the gates was closed.

Nothing is known about the history of the gates from 1945 to 1960. The first official post-war document related to the Royal Gates is the decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 1327 dated August 30, 1960. This document established the list of historical monuments of the city taken under state protection.

However, the only consequence of this decree was that the gates were adorned with a plaque stating, "The monument is registered and protected by the state." No restoration or even conservation work was carried out at that time. By then, the through passage through the gates no longer existed.

For another fifteen years, nothing happened in the history of the gates. They were not restored or written about. The gates gradually deteriorated.

In 1975, the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR and the Department for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments received the following letter signed by the chairman of the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee, Denisov: "The Kaliningrad City Executive Committee reports that repair and conservation work on the 'Royal Gates,' located on Frunze Street — Litovsky Val and being a monument of architecture of state significance, will be carried out in the coming years. Subsequently, this structure will be adapted for the cultural needs of the city."

However, in practice, these good intentions had no consequences. On the contrary, soon a new threat loomed over the gates: "We request your permission, as these do not represent any historical or state value, to demolish the following sculptural images, bas-reliefs, and medallions: a) from the Royal Gates, sculptural images of Friedrich I, Duke Albrecht, and Ottokar II; b) from the Brandenburg Gates, medallions depicting Generals Aster and Boyen and the Prussian coat of arms..."

The author of this letter, sent in 1976 to the State Inspection for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, was Glushkov, head of the Department of Culture of the Kaliningrad Regional Executive Committee.

However, Moscow experts did not approve the "trimming" of the gates. That same year, for the first time since the end of the war, the gates began to be used: Bookstore No. 6 was established there.

In subsequent years, local authorities' attempts to destroy the gates did not cease. In the January 8, 1978 issue of the newspaper "Kaliningradskaya Pravda," it was written that the gates should be demolished. This article was unlikely to be a coincidence, as around the same time the Kaliningrad City Executive Committee sent an official request to the Ministry of Culture and the Central Council of the All-Union Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments to remove the Royal Gates from state protection.

However, once again, the initiative of the Kaliningrad authorities to destroy evidence of the city's pre-war history did not find support in Moscow. The article from "Kaliningradka" caught the attention of the head of the Department for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR, Kopylov, who sharply criticized the initiative.

To resolve the issue of the value of the Royal Gates, a special commission was sent to Kaliningrad by the Ministry of Culture. It worked in the city from September 10 to 16, 1978. As a result, the protective status of the gates was confirmed, and a letter was sent from the Ministry of Culture to Kaliningrad substantiating the historical and cultural significance of the gates and refusing the request to remove their status as a protected monument.

By the beginning of perestroika, the bookstore in the gates ceased to exist. They again became an abandoned structure, neglected and gradually deteriorating. For some time, the gates were used as a warehouse and store. In 1990, a cooperative café was located in the gates.

By 1991, the gates were abandoned. Over the next ten years, this situation did not change, despite many proposals for their restoration and further use. A turning point in the history of the gates was the celebration of the 750th anniversary of Königsberg, which was marked in 2005. The Royal Gates became not only one of many objects restored for the anniversary but also the main symbol of the jubilee.

The jubilee symbol was a silhouette of the gates against the background of the Russian flag with the inscriptions "Kaliningrad" and "750."

Restoration work began in November 2004. By that time, the condition of the gates left much to be desired, as they had been damaged during the war and stood without care for almost sixty years. The bas-reliefs were damaged: the heads of Friedrich I, Duke Albrecht, and Ottokar II had been broken off.

The restoration process was supervised at the highest level, as the organizing committee for the 750th anniversary of Königsberg was headed by the Russian Minister of Economy, Herman Gref. In February 2005, he stated that if the gates were not fully restored by July 3 (the last day of the anniversary celebrations), a Royal Gallows would be erected next to them for the officials responsible for the restoration.

However, such drastic measures were not necessary: the gates were ready on time. Their reopening after restoration took place on July 1.

The restoration of the bas-reliefs of the "three headless kings," as they were nicknamed in Kaliningrad (although one of them, Albrecht, was not a king), presented a special challenge. There was practically no documentation, and it was possible to judge how they looked before the war only from photographs. Sending the figures for restoration to Germany, where there is extensive experience in such work, was extremely difficult due to Russian laws that require a complicated procedure for obtaining permission to temporarily export cultural objects abroad. Therefore, it was decided to restore the figures on site. Sculptor-restorers Alexey Kadyrov and Sergey Bugayev, who had previously restored the Glinka Singing Chapel in St. Petersburg, arrived in Kaliningrad from St. Petersburg for the restoration. Also invited was Vyacheslav Mozgovoy, the leading restorer of the State Hermitage, for the bas-relief restoration.

The difficulty of the restoration was, among other things, that the figures were made of a special type of sandstone, and a special composition had to be created to strengthen the heads. The restored reliefs were reinstalled on the gate facade on June 6, 2005. There were also some curiosities: when the heads were almost ready, detailed photographs of the figures were discovered in one of the Polish archives. The heads had to be remade. Now, in case the kings lose their heads again for any reason in the future, they can be replaced with spares.

On February 10, 2005, the gates were transferred to the Museum of the World Ocean. An exhibition dedicated to Peter I's Great Embassy to Europe was established here.

Like the other gates of Königsberg, the Royal Gates were built in the Neo-Gothic style, but the style is expressed most vividly in the Royal Gates. The material of the gates is brick.

The project author of the gates was General Ernst Ludwig von Aster (according to an unconfirmed version, the artistic facade design was the responsibility of architect Friedrich August Stüler), and the bas-reliefs were created by sculptor Wilhelm Ludwig Stürmer. The Royal Gates consist of a single passage 4.5 meters wide, flanked by former casemates. From the city side, the casemates had windows and doors, and from the outside — embrasures. On the outer side of the gates was the so-called cordegarde — a courtyard that could be fired upon from all sides.

The vertical division of the gates consists of three equally wide parts (portals), with the two side parts enclosing the casemates, and the middle belonging to the passage. The horizontal division is marked by a belt cornice that divides the gates into two tiers. The casemates are one tier high, and the middle part of the gates (the passage section) rises above them by another tier. Battlements are located on the edges of the roofs of both the casemates and the central part. On the four corners of the tall central part, there is a tower each. On the outer corners of the lower tier, there are four similar towers, so the gates have eight towers in total. Now all eight towers look the same, but in the 19th century, the towers of the lower tier had the form of turrets — stylized watchtowers. Most likely, the lower tier towers acquired their current appearance when the gates were rebuilt after being sold to the city.

The first tier of the gates is decorated with three portals, the second — with three niches containing bas-reliefs of King Ottokar II of Bohemia (left), King Friedrich I of Prussia (center), and Duke Albrecht I of Prussia (right). Their family coats of arms are placed under the figures. Above the niches are the coats of arms of the Prussian lands — Samland and Natangia.

The facing walls are two meters thick, and the vaults are 1.25 meters thick. The coverings of the tiers and the ceilings between the tiers are made in the form of a system of cross vaults. Since these vaults caused strong thrust, buttresses were arranged on the side edges of the gates.

Over time, the architecture of the gates underwent changes. As early as 1875, the northern casemate was converted into a pedestrian passage, and later the same happened with the southern casemate. After the gates were sold to the city, the cordegarde and some other elements necessary for a defensive structure but unnecessary for a triumphal arch were demolished. The end sides of the gates were rebuilt, which became visible after the rampart was removed.

During the war, cultural valuables stolen by German troops from museums, archives, libraries, and churches of the Soviet Union were sent to Königsberg. In the spring of 1945, these valuables, along with valuables from Königsberg museums and other cultural institutions, were buried in various hiding places. Possible locations of such hiding places include city gates, including the Royal Gates. There are theories that valuables were hidden in Königsberg gates, including the Royal Gates. In the archives of the Kaliningrad Geological and Archaeological Expedition (a semi-classified organization engaged in searching for lost cultural valuables), there was a document with testimony from Dr. Strauss, a cultural official of the then GDR. He said: Possible burial sites of valuables may be towers from 1840–1860, the Friedländer, Sackheimer, Königs (i.e., Royal), and Rostgarten gates...

The expedition's searches mainly focused on the Rostgarten Gates, as there was other evidence that valuables were hidden there. The searches mostly consisted of visual inspections of the premises. The expedition did not have its own equipment and used devices borrowed temporarily from the military engineering school. Although these devices were not intended for such use, the searchers had no other choice. Case No. 82 was closed in 1975, although due to the reasons described above (lack of specialized equipment), the investigations were quite superficial.

Sources:

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Gates

https://www.culture.ru/institutes/12014/royal-gates-in-kaliningrad