Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz represents the most ambitious urban construction project of post-reunification Germany: built from scratch between 1992 and the early 2000s on the former death strip that had divided East and West Berlin for four decades. Renzo Piano, Helmut Jahn, and Hans Kollhoff shaped the skyline with glass towers and brick facades — the Sony Center, with its tent-like roof lit in shifting colors at night, has become the defining image of the ensemble. Before the war and division, the square was one of Europe's busiest intersections; Berlin's first traffic light tower stood here as early as 1924. Today the district hosts the Berlinale film festival venues, multiplex cinemas, and a restaurant mile, while the Panoramapunkt atop the Kollhoff Tower — reached by Europe's fastest external elevator — offers a stark visual contrast between the Gründerzeit city fabric and the postmodern quarter built on what was once no-man's-land.

From wall-zone wasteland to Renzo Piano's towers and the Sony Center's glass roof — quintessentially 1990s Berlin.