Britannia Centre Spandau

The former Britannia Centre Spandau was built 1988-1990 by the British Property Services Agency as a family centre for the forces stationed in Berlin - on the very ground of the Spandau war-crimes prison, demolished in 1987, where Rudolf Hess had been the last lone inmate. The centre was meant to bundle a kindergarten, sports hall, cinema and shops for around 13,000 British dependants. Barely finished, reunification turned the Allied withdrawal into a matter of months; the British left Berlin in 1994. Today the site is in civilian use and is an odd monument to the very last phase of the Cold War - an investment for a world that no longer existed by the time the paint had dried.