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I have been following the rebuilding of the Berlin City Palace located on the museum island in the centre of the City at the end of Unter den Linden avenue in Berlin. The palace which stood on the site from 1443 was the official residence of the Kings of Prussia and then the Emperors of Germany. The baroque style building was fire bombed during the second world war and totally demolished by the Communist East German Government in the 1950’s.
Through private and public financing it has been rebuilt and will be inaugurated in 2019, now serving as a museum, library, conference centre as part of the Humboldt University.
The reconstruction of the outside walls is faithful to the original. Here are some photos of the finished product in its soft pale yellow colour, as the scaffolding comes down.
All the decorative elements in stone had to be re-carved from drawings and photos of the original.
Larry Muffin At Home 
What a beautiful building.
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and these photos only show one small part of it.
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The herculean effort to get something like this off the ground is beyond my comprehension. Pardon me for diminishing the appearance my awe, but I simultaneously recall a Steve Martin bit where he holds out a small hatchet, identifying it as the very hatchet George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. “Of course, I’ve had to replace the head and the handle, but it occupies the same space,”
(Well, it was funny when he said it…)
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Well indeed it is an exact reproduction of the original, but the craftsmanship to sculpt all the decorative elements is wonderful. It also completes the original design of the Royal quarter of the city and complements all the other buildings around it.
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Stunning. Amazing to see that kind of craftsmanship now.
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