Red City Hall

This guide to Berlin's Red City Hall follows a name that started as a plain joke about the color of the brick architect Hermann Waesemann chose in 1861, and how the Cold War took that joke literally once the building became the seat of the East Berlin government, with a rival town hall running West Berlin across the divide. It covers the tower's postwar reconstruction and the terracotta frieze added in the 1870s, thirty-six panels narrating the city's history along the ground floor. Walk that ground-floor band slowly as you listen.