St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Catholic cathedral in Mitte district, Berlin, Germany.
St. Hedwig's Cathedral is a round domed church on Bebelplatz, built from 1747 to 1773 to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff after the Pantheon in Rome. Its green copper dome, added in 1886–87, carries a lantern and cross above a classical facade with a pediment relief of the Adoration of the Magi and an inscription naming Cardinal Quirini as main donor.
Frederick the Great donated the land and commissioned Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to design the church, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome. Construction ran from 1747 to 1773, interrupted by the Seven Years' War and halted when 64,000 talers were still missing; Berlin's Jewish community even offered to buy the unfinished shell as a synagogue. Ignacy Krasicki, Bishop of Warmia, consecrated it on 1 November 1773.
The dedication to Hedwig of Andechs, patron saint of Silesia, reflects the church's origin for Catholic immigrants from Silesia. Three tapestries behind the bishop's chair, woven by Margaretha Reichardt (1963), Anton Wendling and Else Bechteler-Moses (1979–1981), share the motif of the heavenly Jerusalem.
The cathedral reopened on 24 November 2024 after renovation work that began in 2018. The entrance faces the paved open area of Bebelplatz, and the interior is now arranged on an upper level around the central altar, reached from the two-storey space below. The crypt holds the graves of bishops Konrad von Preysing, Alfred Bengsch and Georg Sterzinsky.
The hemispherical altar is built from small stones that parishioners gathered from across the diocese, following an idea by the Austrian artist Leo Zogmayer. It stands at the centre of the roughly circular room, with the congregation seated around it. The 2018–2024 renovation also split the two-storey 1963 interior into two levels, placing the church room upstairs.
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