And the people strolling on the Italian-style, terracotta-coloured part of Potsdamer Platz; the people sitting under trees in the summer amidst the almost convivial big-city anonymity; the people gazing in wonder at the festive redcarpet parade of stars at the Berlinale every winter on Marlene Dietrich Platz – these people do not fear for the city’s future: a city which reminds us of the Reichstag, having given it a new dome that shines out by night for miles around.

The Reichstag, where the fate of Berlin has so often merged more closely with that of the whole of Germany than any other place. I am thinking of the Reichstag fire of 1933; of the terrible, bloody conquest of Berlin which finally transformed the city into a desert of rubble and was crowned by the Red Army taking the Reichstag; I am thinking of the great firework display in celebration of reunification, at which an enormous crowd fused the ensemble of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate.