Reichstag Building & Dome

The Reichstag was completed in 1894 as the seat of the German Empire's parliament, survived a suspicious fire in 1933 that Hitler used as a pretext to seize emergency powers, was left a gutted ruin after Red Army soldiers fought their way to its roof in the final days of World War II, and stood largely unused just behind the Berlin Wall for decades of division — before finally becoming the seat of Germany's reunified Bundestag in 1999.

That 1999 renovation, led by British architect Norman Foster, is why most visitors come today. Foster added a walkable glass dome above the historic building, engineered so that natural light reaches the parliamentary chamber below and visitors can look directly down into the seat of German democracy while climbing a spiral ramp to a 360-degree rooftop terrace. It was designed explicitly as a piece of political symbolism — the public, quite literally, positioned above their elected representatives.