Not exactly. Everything you see here has been built in the last 25 years...
In 1945 the German city of Dresden was devastated by Allied bombers.
4,000 tons of high explosives were dropped on the city; a firestorm broke out and at least 25,000 people died. This was among the worst of WWII's many tragedies.
Here's how Dresden looked before 1945:
And here is Dresden after the bombs had been dropped and the fires had died down.
More than ninety percent of the city centre had been destroyed, including the 18th century Frauenkirche, a masterpiece of Northern European Baroque architecture and an important Protestant church.
Destroyed or ruined too were the Semper Opera House, the Catholic Cathedral, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the entirety of the old city centre, known as the Neumarkt.
What happened next? Some of the old buildings were reconstructed by the East German Government, including the Semper Opera, but otherwise much of old Dresden remained empty.
While the blackened stumps of the Frauenkirche survived as a memorial to those who had died in the war.
After the fall of Communism and the reunification of Germany in 1991 things started to change.
In 1994 the Stiftung Frauenkirche Dresden was founded: an organisation dedicating to rebuilding the Frauenkirche exactly as it had been before its destruction...
And by the year 2005 this apparently ambitious goal had been achieved.
Exactly seventy years after the bombing of Dresden the new Frauenkirche was consecrated, with remaining elements of the original 18th century church incorporated into its modern reincarnation.
And so the Semper Opera House, the Cathedral, the Academy of Fine Arts... all have been rebuilt or restored to their pre-war state, in consultation with historical documents and architectural experts.
Old Dresden has been meticulously and lovingly brought back to life.
In 1999 the Dresden Historical Neumarkt Society was founded, dedicated to rebuilding the Neumarkt.
Crucial here was a public survey which indicated overwhelming support for the reconstruction of the Neumarkt. Those in charge listened to the people, and the project went ahead...
The Neumarkt has re-emerged from its rubble. Nobody visiting the city now would know that just two decades ago none of these buildings existed.
Some architects protested that this was inauthentic and superficial, but local people and tourists didn't seem to mind.
What happened in Dresden is not unusual; innumerable cities all around Europe had been gutted by the war, if not quite so badly.
But in many places a decision was taken to build something new rather than reconstruct; Modernist architecture was given its chance to shine.
Why? Well, here was a unique chance to fix old problems of urban design by creating better housing, public services, and spaces.
In other words, the chance to build a better world.
London's celebrated Barbican Centre was built in an area destroyed during the Blitz.
But not all such postwar projects have been equally successful.
In many cases, despite the genuine optimism that accompanited their construction in the 1950s and 1960s, these quasi-utopian projects have failed to deliver on what they promised.
But in others, like Dresden, the public made their opinions clear and the local authorities acted accordingly.
Decades on, tourists visiting cities like Munich or Warsaw have no idea that they are walking around "historic centres" (re)built relatively recently.
Another example, from the First World War, is that of the Great Cloth Hall in Ypres, Belgium, a masterpiece of Medieval architecture.
It was initially going to be left as a memorial, but the plan changed and by 1967 it had been rebuilt exactly as it once stood, brick for brick.
Perhaps the most interesting case study of all is Frankfurt, where the old city centre was destroyed by bombs and then replaced by a complex of Modernist buildings in the decades after the war.
The public never warmed to their new town centre, and since the launch of a major project in 2012 those Modernist building have been demolished and replaced by a reconstruction of the town centre as it existed prior to the Second World War.
What do we make of all this?
Well, the claim that it is no longer possible to build in historical styles is disproven by the Frauenkirche in Dresden, the old towns of Warsaw, Frankfurt, or Munich, the Great Cloth Hall of Ypres, among so many more examples.
They are evidence that we would be wrong to draw a hard line between the architecture of the past and present.
To say that modern architecture (often unfairly maligned!) is a necessity does not account for these many reconstructions; they suggest that we always have a choice.
Some say it is inauthentic to simply imitate the styles of the past, and wholly artificial to reconstruct long-destroyed old buildings using modern materials — the reconstruction of Dresden was met with these very criticisms.
Better to build something true to the 21st century...
Perhaps, but one can hardly call Dresden a Potemkin City.
And in two or three hundred years all this "new" architecture will be old once again; accusations of inauthenticity will cease to hold water.
Besides, most people care less about "authenticity" than aesthetics.
And what's wrong with creating buildings the public love?
This is not to spite modern architecture — which has seen many beloved triumphs. Rather, when we know what the public want, and when we know it's possible to provide it, *not* doing so is surely worse than inauthenticity.
But, above all, Dresden reminds us that architecture is not, nor ever has been, about function alone.
Buildings also generate identity and can be of profound importance to those who live and work in or around them.
This is not just stone and mortar; it has meaning.
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Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the most famous places in the world, and rightly so.
But what is it, who built it, and when?
Well, the first thing to say is that Angkor Wat stands at the heart of a colossal, abandoned city...
Angkor is the name of an historic (and ruined) city in northwestern Cambodia.
It was the capital of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to the 13th centuries AD, and in those years it rose to become one of the world's major urban centres.
But Angkor was abandoned in the year 1431.
Angkor Wat itself was built during the 12th century, in about thirty years, under King Suryavarman II.
Suryavarman had reunited the Khmer Empire and extended its borders — Angkor Wat was supposed to be both the empire's primary temple and his final resting place.
174 years ago there was a huge storm in northern Scotland, and it uncovered something strange.
From beneath the soil emerged a perfectly preserved village older than the Pyramids, and it even had furniture.
This is the 5,000 year old story of Skara Brae...
Orkney is the name of an archipelago just off the coast of northern Scotland.
It was here, in 1850, that a colossal storm partly destroyed a grassy hill by the sea.
When locals investigated they discovered that it had revealed what seemed to be walls made of large stones.
A local landowner and amateur archaeologist called William Watt started a proper dig, and after excavating four houses he brought in an expert called George Petrie.
By 1868 the importance of the discovery — which some claimed to have known about for years — was clear.
Rembrandt, who lived 400 years ago, is usually called one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
But why? What made him so good?
Strange as it sounds, what made Rembrandt special was the way he painted himself — and how many times he did it...
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in the Netherlands in 1606.
By 18 he was a painter, but unlike others of his generation he refused to study in Italy and remained at home.
At 22 he painted this brooding, supremely confident self-portrait — and a star was born.
This was the Dutch Golden Age, a time of cultural and economic flourishing when the Netherlands found itself at the centre of global politics and its cities were booming with trade.
And, of course, an impossibly talented generation of artists like Vermeer and Rubens had arisen.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered exactly 225 years ago today — inside the wall of an old fortress that was being demolished.
This is the strange story of the stone that brought Ancient Egypt back to life...
Why is it called the Rosetta Stone?
Because it was discovered near a town called Rashid in northern Egypt — when the French invaded in the late 18th century they corrupted its name to Rosetta.
So, there are three parts to this story.
First: what is it?
The Rosetta Stone is a slab of granodiorite (a rock similar to granite) mined at Aswan in southern Egypt; it's over 1 metre tall, 3/4 of a metre wide, and weighs 3/4 of a tonne.