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Ave Maria
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Ave Maria
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“An army that nobody can fight with“ is how the proprietors of Ave Maria describe the sky-blue Madonna figures that decorate the window and website of their attractive devotional shop.
Entering for the first time, you are likely to be astonished by the statues, crucifixes, rosaries and small depictions of saints – everything you might expect in a place of pilgrimage rather than in austere Berlin. However, an interest in spiritual values and the decorative aspect of these traditional Catholic religious props is also growing in the Protestant capital. Many people visit out of curiosity, mistaking the wondrous shop as a sort of gallery. Others want to try out the scent and effect of the incense (of which there are more than forty different types), exchange their household candles for tall altar tapers, or to study the Christian and esoteric literature on offer.
However, Ave Maria‘s major clientele is from the city‘s large foreign Catholic communities: Poles, South Americans, Koreans and Vietnamese. They are well catered for here, with various ritual commodities including censers, amulets and pendants, wicks and tapers for eternal light, and incense cones which are weighed by the gramme (and whose heavy aromatic resins spice the shop’s rooms). |
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Address: Potsdamer Str. 75, 10785 Berlin, +49 (0)30 2652284, www.avemaria.de
Hours of opening: Mon-Fri 12.00-18.00, Sat 12.00-15.00
Bus, Tube, Tram: U1 Kurfürstenstr.; Bus M48, M85 Lützowstr./Potsdamer Str.
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