The Berlin Palace (German: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (German: Königliches Schloss),^[1] adjacent to the Berlin Cathedral and Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture.^[2] The royal palace was one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its 60-meter-high (200 ft) dome.



Used for various government functions after the abolition of the monarchy in the 1918 revolution, the palace was damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, and was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, it became the location of the modernist East German Palace of the Republic (the parliament building of East Germany).



After German reunification in 1989 and years of debate and discussion, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both buildings, the Palace of the Republic was itself demolished in 2009 and the exterior of most of the Berlin Palace was reconstructed beginning in 2013 to house the Humboldt Forum museum. The east façade of the reconstructed palace incorporates a modernist design. Architect Franco Stella oversaw the project and the exterior reconstruction was completed in 2020. The new palace interior combines both historicist and modernist elements in its construction design.