What is "turkentor"

Türkentor (Turks' Gate) may refer to one of two buildings in Germany:

• Türkentor (Helmstedt)
• Türkentor (Munich)

The Türkentor (Turks' Gate) is a gatehouse in Munich. It is the only surviving part of the Türkenkaserne barracks, built in 1826 for the Royal Bavarian Infantry Lifeguards Regiment. The gatehouse was named after the Türkenstraße on which it was located, which was in turn named after the Türkengraben channel dug along the Kurfürstenstraße by Turkish prisoners of war during the German states' 18th century wars with the Ottoman Empire to provide a waterway as part of the North Munich Canal System (Nordmünchner Kanalsystem) linking the Munich Residenz with the Schleissheim Palace.

Between 2008 and 2010 the Türkentor was restored with 780,000 Euros from the Stiftung Pinakothek der Moderne. It reopened in October 2010 and since then has housed the sculpture Large Red Sphere by the American artist Walter De Maria, which had been purchased by the Stiftung Brandhorst.

The Türkentor (Turks' Gate) is a triumphal arch and gateway in Helmstedt in Lower Saxony in Germany. The main entrance to the former St. Ludger's Abbey and a gateway to the Domänenhof, the arch was built in 1716 to celebrate the victory over the Ottomans by Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Battle of Petrovaradin earlier that year, in which Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg had also been instrumental. Originally sited in line with the Taubenhaus on what is now Bundesstraße 1, it was severely damaged by bombing in the Second World War and resited to its present location in 1986.

The main pediment bears the arms of the Habsburg emperor and the side-arches bear the arms of the abbey's abbot and prior, who had the arch built in celebration of the victory, of family connections to the House of Brunswick and of links between the abbey and the emperor. The architrave also bears the Roman numerals for the year 1716 and above the double pilasters on either side are a sun (symbol of the Habsburg Empire) and a crescent moon (symbol of the Ottoman Empire).