The story of this place
Across eleven square kilometres of Nuremberg, Albert Speer designed a stage set for the Nazi cult of power: the vast Zeppelin Field with its grandstand, the unfinished Congress Hall modelled on the Colosseum, and avenues built for hundreds of thousands to march. From 1933 the annual Reichsparteitage drew up to a million people; Speer's 'Cathedral of Light' of 152 searchlights and Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 film 'Triumph of the Will' turned the spectacle into propaganda seen worldwide. In 1945 US troops dynamited the swastika atop the tribune in a filmed demolition. The colossal ruins survive deliberately un-beautified, and a Documentation Centre confronts how the regime staged its seduction of a nation.