Story
The story of Reichstag
In 1882, 200 architects competed to design this building, and the winner, Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot, finally saw his plan built. Wilhelm I laid the foundation stone on 9 June 1884, and the Reichstag was completed in 1894. Look at the four corner towers: they stood for the four German kingdoms at unification, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg.
The building housed the parliaments of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, but the Reichstag fire of 1933 caused severe damage and became a pivotal event in the entrenchment of the Nazi regime. Damaged again in World War II, it was an important target for the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin.
From 1995 to 1999, Norman Foster redesigned it for the parliament of reunified Germany. Today you can walk up into the glass dome above the plenary chamber, proposed by Gottfried Böhm.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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