Berlin Fortress
The Berlin Fortress (German "Festung Berlin") was the fortification of the historic city of Berlin. Construction started in 1650. The ramparts, walls, moats and glacis of the 17th-century bastion fort ran around the historic city limits. The demolition of its ramparts began in 1740. History Berlin was an important market place on the main east-west route (today Bundesstraße 1). However, it had no real fortifications, unlike Spandau in the west (Spandau Citadel) and Köpenick in the east (Köpenick Palace). Although Berlin was not the site of any battles during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) it suffered heavily from the Swedish occupation; by the end of the war in 1631, a third of the buildings had been demolished and half the population had fled or died. Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg ordered the engineer architect Johann Gregor Memhardt to make plans for a fortification for the town. These began in 1650 following the contemporary fortification model of bastion forts in northern Italy. Large ramparts were erected and the space between was filled with water. The construction of the parts east of the river was finished between 1658 and 1662. There were more problems with the western parts due to the