Alter Markt and City Palace
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Transcript
The Alter Markt has been redesigned so many times that it functions almost like a political palimpsest. The Prussian City Palace once anchored the square. Damaged in the Second World War, it was demolished by East German authorities in 1960. Decades later, its exterior forms were reconstructed around a modern interior for the Brandenburg state parliament.
That is not a simple restoration. A royal facade now houses democratic government. Potsdam chose to recover a historic silhouette while changing the building’s political function completely. The square therefore asks a difficult heritage question: when a destroyed monument is rebuilt, are we restoring history—or creating a new interpretation of it?