Berlin's Reichstag: These Walls Talk

Reichstag exterior with Norman Foster's glass dome


Victorious Soviet graffiti on interior walls wow.


Close Up of Graffiti


"You have paid dearly for Lenigrad"

Another big highlight of Berlin for me was my tour of the Reichstag. Norman Foster's glass dome and Jenny Holzer's art work were both really striking but it was the graffiti on the walls that had the greatest impact on me. Here's the deal:
When Soviet troops took Berlin in 1945 they scrawled victorious graffiti all over the interior walls of the building. The words were then hidden for decades when the walls were covered up after the war. When Norman Foster and his team began work on the building in 1995 they were rediscovered. Foster then made the courageous decision to incorporate them into the new structure: in order to make the Reichstag a living museum of German history and show a brave determination not to forget the tragedies of the past. Methinks such a courageous decision!!

The photo above contains the graffiti I found the most striking: These 6 Russian words translate as
"You have paid dearly for Lenigrad".
Gave me chills.