Hackescher Markt

This guide to Hackescher Markt in Berlin follows developer Kurt Berndt, who in 1906 rejected the city's dark, airless tenement courtyards and hired self-taught architect August Endell to wrap a market-square courtyard in glazed Art Nouveau brick instead, with seven more courtyards built to follow. It traces how the complex fell into neglect under East German state ownership, its tiles cracking and paint peeling for decades, and the years of restoration that brought Endell's color back after the wall fell.