I am not going to bore you with 80-odd images of our extended weekend in Berlin, but would just like to point out some areas of interest in what is both the capital and largest city in Germany.
New experiences for me were finally getting to see the inside of the walk-in glass dome on top of the Reichstag, a trip aboard an electric boat on the River Spree, the all-enveloping Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and a surviving wartime bunker now housing an amazing collection of contemporary art.
I have spoken about the Dome elsewhere on this blog. It sits on top of a historic legislative building that is the seat of the German Bundestag.
Severely damaged by fire in the 1930s and then again during the Second World War, it was modernised and restored in the 1950s and used for exhibitions and special events.
Following reunification, the Reichstag was redesigned by Norman Foster for its permanent use as a parliamentary building.
Just a few years previously, environmental artists Christo and Jean-Claude had famously wrapped the entire building in fabric!
Our boat trip through the parliamentary area and museum island district was aboard a 110-year-old Dutch-built vessel called the Hemingway.
Converted to electric propulsion, we glided along Berlin’s River Spree, which used to form part of the boundary between East and West in the days of the Berlin Wall.
Close to the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate is the incredibly moving Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – also known as the Holocaust Memorial.
Designed by architect Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold, it consists of a nearly five-acre site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field.
Beneath it steps lead down to a ‘Place of Information’ which holds the names of around 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims.
Earlier that morning we had visited the most unusual gallery space l have ever experienced. A listed air raid bunker built in 1943 to shelter up to three thousand people from Allied raids on the city.
It had been built above ground, our guide and curator told us, and ornately decorated as Hitler was proposing to clad it in a memorial to the glorious dead of the Third Reich after his ‘victory’ over the Allies.
It subsequently became a store for bananas during the time of the GDR and, more recently a nightclub, before being purchased by advertising agent Christian Boros and his wife Karen for their huge collection of contemporary art.
The works are installed over five floors of the bunker, with the couple having a penthouse built on its roof in which they now live.
You aren’t allowed to take pictures while touring the various spaces where sculpture, installations, and artwork are displayed, but I did grab a few shots at the entrance while we waited to begin our tour.
Just four points of interest in a fascinating few days in Berlin.
That’s epic Richard 🤝🤝🤝