Walks through Berlin's Cemeteries

the fall of the Wall in 1989, the reunification of Germany in 1990, and the subsequent move of the capital back from Bonn, Berlin has been arguably the liveliest and most changeable city of Europe. Its political and cultural energies are reflected in the physical reconstitution of a city that was extensively damaged in World War II and that, especially in its historic center (Mitte), continued to languish under the communists, who unhesitatingly tore down buildings such as the great baroque royal palace that they regarded as symbols of an oppressive Prussian past. As a result, during the last decade Berlin has provided a gratifying playground for international architects, featuring such a potpourri of forms as Norman Forster's glass dome floating luminously on the massive structure of the Reichstag, the classical glass-and-stone modernism of I. M. Pei's Exhibition Hall appended to the historical museum in the baroque Zeughaus (Arsenal), the harsh metallic zigzags of Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, the three thousand concrete steles designed by Peter Eisenmann near the Brandenburg Gate as a monument to the Jewish victims of Nazism, and the miniskyscrapers surrounding Potsdamer Platz. Although the forest of building cranes that dominated the cityscape only five years ago has been thinned, almost every street in the historic center changes and grows from year to year as new buildings go up and old ones are restored. In the midst of this