Altstadt Spandau is the historic centre (old town) of the Spandau borough in the western suburbs of Berlin, situated on the right bank of the Havel river by its confluence with the Spree tributary. It arose near the site of a former Slavic gord during the German eastward expansion (Ostsiedlung) in the early 13th century. A castle at Spandowe, erected on a Havel island to secure the eastern borderlands of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, was already documented in an 1197 deed issued by the Ascanian margrave Otto II.