Adolf Hitler intended to recreate the Vatican's St Peter's Square in the centre of Berlin to honour his ally Benito Mussolini, newly discovered documents have revealed.

Albert Speer, the fuhrer's chief architect, was commissioned to draw up the plans, which have been discovered by historians examining his papers.

They had been stored in a secret room inside Moscow's Museum of Architecture after being taken to Russia at the end of the Second World War.

In total, there were more than 200 boxes of files belonging to Speer, whose grand designs for the rebuilding of Nazi Berlin under Hitler were already well known.

But the plans for a new, Germanic version of St Peter's Square - complete with a giant statue of Mussolini - in Berlin have astonished historians.