Global Stone Project

Five continents, five steps to peace

Each stone group stands for one of what the artist calls the five steps toward peace: Awakening for Europe, Hope for Africa, Forgiveness for Asia, Love for the Americas and Peace for Australia. Informational plaques at the site spell out the names and stories of the rocks, so you can read your way around the circle rather than guess.↗↗

The materials are as varied as their homelands. A massive white quartzite hauled from the Ural near Sverdlovsk commemorates a 2003 meeting between Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder; a black granite slab from Africa is inscribed with the word "Hope" in several languages; a ring of metamorphic rock represents Asia; and a block of iron ore surrounded by five polished, black-and-white banded stones stands for Australia. The most talked-about piece was a three-metre, 35-tonne sandstone monolith from Venezuela, dubbed the "whale" — but after a 22-year dispute over how it had been collected, that stone was loaded up and returned to the Gran Sabana in 2020, so the Berlin circle has since shifted with it.↗↗↗

The solstice and the invisible circle of light

The installation is built around a poetic optical trick. The stones are set at calculated angles to the sun so that, once a year on 21 June, their mirror-polished surfaces reflect the light back toward the sky, sending it on a 16-minute circuit of the earth to meet their sibling stones in their home countries, and drawing five invisible straight lines between the Berlin rocks. The artist asks visitors to "connect" those lines with their own imagination and complete the circle — making each observer a participant in the peace he had in mind.↗↗

You don't have to wait for the summer solstice to see the effect. On any bright day the freshly ground facets glitter and flash in the sun, and the artist himself traditionally holds a small gathering among the stones around midday on 21 June to mark the moment the light "links" all ten.↗↗

Finding it and what to expect

The stones sit in the Tiergarten park in the Mitte district, an easy stroll from Potsdamer Platz and within sight of the Reichstag, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Brandenburg Gate — so it slots naturally into a walk through Berlin's governmental and memorial quarter. Look for the meadow behind the white statue of Goethe; the polished boulders are hard to miss once you are close.↗↗

This is open-air art on grass, with no entrance, ticket or fixed opening time — the site is accessible around the clock and has a wheelchair-accessible approach. There is no café or shelter of its own, so treat it as a stop on a park walk rather than a full attraction, and give yourself a few minutes at each stone to read its plaque and notice how differently the five rock types catch the light.↗

A note on what you'll see: the layout has changed over the years, most notably with the 2020 return of the Venezuelan "whale" stone to its homeland. Don't be surprised if the exact number and arrangement of rocks differ from older photos or guidebook descriptions.↗