Spandau Citadel, built in 1594, the 1848 St. Marien am Behnitz Catholic church designed by August Soller, and Spandau arsenal, Germany's arms development center until 1919, now a museum. That arsenal's Spandau machine gun inspired the slang "Spandau Ballet" to describe dying soldiers on barbed wire during the First World War, and later was applied to the appearance of Nazi war criminals hanged at Spandau Prison. The notorious prison, built in 1876, held Nazi war criminals after World War II until 1987, when it was demolished after the death of the last surviving prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In 1979, the English New
Altstadt Spandau Renaissance fortress erected at the site of the medieval castle from about 1560 onwards. The walled-up Altstadt quarter became the nucleus of the larger Spandau Fortress, built under Prussian rule after the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, also a centre of the German arms industry. Today the Altstadt quarter is served by Rathaus Spandau and Altstadt Spandau stations on the Berlin U-Bahn line . Berlin-Spandau station, served by S-Bahn, regional and intercity railway routes, is situated to the south of the Altstadt. Altstadt Spandau Altstadt Spandau is the historic centre (Old Town) of the Spandau borough in the