Berlin history

No city in the world has had as dramatic a recent history as Berlin - the decadent and artistic Weimar Berlin of 'Cabaret' fame gave way in the 1930s to Hitler's Nazi capital earmarked to be rebuilt as the world capital Germania, though the massive destruction brought about by first allied bombing and then the Red Army put paid to that.

The city was divided into four sections after the war, and from 1962 the infamous Berlin Wall imprisoned East Berliners and became the Cold War's most visible scar. The wall fell in 1989, and as Germany reunited, Berlin became Europe's biggest building site - refusing its fragmented neighbourhoods and no man's lands into one modern metropolis.