Hotel Berlino

BERLIN is a city of anniversaries. It's been half a century since allied bombers razed 80 percent of the city to the ground; nearly forty years since JFK announced 'Ich bin ein Berliner' and the Berlin Wall was raised, and at least a decade from that momentous night when, before the eyes of the world's media, it finally came tumbling down. The fall of the Wall meant the rise of a new reunited Berlin and a rash of construction and building work across this massive city. United Berlin is huge, over eight times the size of Paris with a population of around 3.5 million.

Once no more than waste ground in the heart of the city's no-man's land, Potsdamer Platz, symbolizes the changing face and rising profile of Berlin. Out of the rubble of the wall has risen new steel and glass monuments to the westernisation of the whole city.