Humboldt Forum

This guide to the Humboldt Forum in Berlin opens on a Friday in May 2020, when a golden cross was hoisted onto the rebuilt palace's new dome, and Berliners began arguing over an inscription circling it in gold letters: a Bible verse chosen by a Prussian king in the 1840s, declaring that every knee should bow before the name of Jesus. The same king had it cut into the original dome in the 1840s, not long after revolutionaries across Europe tried to topple monarchs like him. Look up at the dome above you as you listen.