customs checks, these people had begun to offer coffee, bread, cakes and confectionery from their homes or from roadside stalls to travelers passing through, thus beginning the tradition of providing food and drink around the future Potsdamer Platz. Larger and more purpose-built establishments began to take their place, and they in turn were superseded by bigger and grander ones. The former district of quiet villas was by now anything but quiet: Potsdamer Platz had taken on an existence all its own whose sheer pace of life rivalled anything within the city. By the mid-1860s direct taxation had made the customs wall redundant, and so in 1866–7 most of it was demolished along with all the city gates except two – the Brandenburg Gate and the Potsdam Gate. The removal of the customs wall allowed its former route to be turned into yet another road running through Potsdamer Platz, thus increasing still further the amount of traffic passing through. This road, both north and south of the platz, was named Königgrätzer Straße after the Prussian victory over Austria at the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, in the Austro-Prussian War. The railways arrive The railway first came to Berlin in 1838, with the opening of the Potsdamer Bahnhof, terminus of a 26 km line linking the city with Potsdam, opened throughout by 29 October (in 1848 the line would be extended to Magdeburg and beyond). Since the city authorities would not allow the new line to breach the customs wall, still standing at the time, it had to stop just short, at Potsdamer Platz, but it was this that kick-started the real transformation of the area, into the bustling focal point that Potsdamer Platz became. Three years later a second railway terminus opened. Six hundred meters to the southeast, with a front facade facing Askanischer Platz, the Anhalter Bahnhof was the Berlin terminus of a line running as far as Jüterbog and extended to Dessau, Kothen and beyond. Both termini began life modestly, but to cope with increasing demand, both went on to much bigger and better things, a new Potsdamer Bahnhof, destined to be Berlin's busiest station, opening on 30 August 1872 and a new Anhalter Bahnhof, destined to be the city's biggest and finest, on 15 June 1880. This latter station benefitted from the closure of a short-lived third terminus in the area – the Dresdner Bahnhof, located