What is the Reichstag building?

The Reichstag is Berlin's parliament building, home to the German Bundestag. It was built between 1884 and 1894 to plans by Paul Wallot as the parliament of the new German Empire, and its heavy stone front carries the whole 20th century: the 1933 fire, the 1945 Battle of Berlin, thirty years as a domeless ruin beside the Wall, and its rebuild in the 1990s as a working parliament with a public glass dome.

Can you still see war damage on the Reichstag?

Yes. When Norman Foster rebuilt the interior in the 1990s, the old outer walls and their marks were deliberately kept. You can still see shrapnel and bullet scars in the west facade stone, and inside, on a dome visit, the Cyrillic graffiti that Soviet soldiers scrawled on the walls in May 1945 was preserved rather than cleaned off.

How do you visit the Reichstag dome, and is it free?

The glass dome and roof terrace are free, but you must register in advance at bundestag.de. You give the full name and date of birth of everyone in your group, and each visitor aged 16 or over shows the matching passport or ID card on the day. The dome is open daily from 8:00 until midnight, with last admission at 21:45. If you did not book ahead, you can try the Visitors' Service centre near the building, but slots fill fast in summer, so booking early is the safe move.

What happened to the Reichstag after World War II?

After the war the shell sat in West Berlin with its dome gone. A plain restoration by Paul Baumgarten between 1961 and 1971 left it flat-roofed and barely used, because the real parliament met in Bonn and the Berlin Wall ran right behind the building. In 1995 the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the whole Reichstag in silver fabric for two weeks, drawing about five million visitors just before the rebuild began.

Who designed the Reichstag's glass dome?

The British architect Norman Foster designed the reconstruction, carried out between 1994 and 1999. He kept the old scarred walls but added a walk-up glass dome directly over the debating chamber, so visitors literally stand above the politicians below. The Bundestag sat in the rebuilt Reichstag again for the first time on 19 April 1999.

The Reichstag, Before and After: How One Building Holds Germany’s Whole Century

Q: What was the Reichstag fire of 1933?

On the night of 27 February 1933 the Reichstag caught fire and the plenary chamber and the original dome were gutted. Hitler, who had been chancellor for four weeks, used the fire to push through the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties and became one of the first steps toward dictatorship. The fire itself left no scar you can point to today, because the burned original dome was later removed.

Yusuf Ucuz
4 days ago
6 min read

Most people walk up to the Reichstag, photograph the glass dome, and move on to the Brandenburg Gate a few minutes away. I understand why. From the front it looks like one solid, slightly stern old parliament with a modern hat on top. What that first glance hides is that you are looking at the single most rebuilt, refought-over building in Germany, a place that has been an imperial showpiece, a burnt-out shell, a battlefield, a Cold War dead end, and finally a working democracy, all on the same patch of ground.

That is what makes the Reichstag worth more than a photo. Seen before and after, it is a short history of the whole German 20th century written in one facade. My advice: give it ten minutes and learn what you are actually looking at, because once you can read the layers, this becomes one of the most moving stops in the city. Here is the building, then and now, and how to get inside it for free.

The Reichstag in Berlin at sunset, its stone facade lit warm gold beneath the modern glass dome, with the German flag flying.

The Reichstag today: imperial stone below, Norman Foster's glass dome above. Almost everything between those two layers is a story of destruction.

One building, five different Germanys

The reason the Reichstag rewards a close look is that nothing about it was ever left alone. Most famous buildings tell one story. This one was built by an empire, gutted by fire, fought over street by street, left to rot beside the Berlin Wall, and then rebuilt as the home of a reunified democracy. The stone in front of you carries all of that at once.

So instead of treating it as one building, it helps to read it as a stack of layers, oldest at the bottom. Once you know the layers are there, you start spotting them: a scar in the stone, four bronze words, a glass dome that only makes sense as an answer to everything below it.

Before: an empire built it to look powerful

The Reichstag went up between 1884 and 1894 to plans by the architect Paul Wallot, and Kaiser Wilhelm II laid the final stone on 5 December 1894. The young German Empire wanted a parliament building that looked as heavy and permanent as the monarchies around it, so Wallot gave it thick stone walls, four corner towers, and a great dome that was, for its day, an engineering showpiece.

There is a small irony built into the front. The bronze words above the main entrance, Dem Deutschen Volke (To the German People), were only fixed in place in 1916, more than twenty years after the building opened. The space had been left empty that whole time because dedicating the house to the people, rather than to the Kaiser, was politically awkward. The lettering you see was designed in 1916 by Peter Behrens.

The Reichstag around 1900 with its original stone-and-glass dome and the Bismarck monument in front, on the imperial Koenigsplatz.

The imperial Reichstag around 1900, its first dome intact and the Bismarck monument out front. This is the "before" almost nobody pictures today.

The fire that changed everything

On the night of 27 February 1933, the Reichstag burned. The plenary chamber and the original dome were gutted. Hitler had been chancellor for just four weeks, and he used the fire to push through the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties overnight and became one of the first concrete steps from democracy into dictatorship.

This is the strange thing to stand there and realise: the fire left almost nothing you can point to today. The burned-out original dome was taken down years later, so the dome above you now is not the one that burned. What the fire really destroyed was not stone. It was German democracy, for the next twelve years.

The Reichstag burning at night on 27 February 1933, flames behind the columns and the Dem Deutschen Volke inscription.

The Reichstag fire, 27 February 1933. The building survived; the republic did not.

After the war: a ruin on the wrong side of the Wall

By 1945 the Reichstag was barely used, but the Red Army made it the symbolic prize of the Battle of Berlin. Soviet soldiers raised a flag over the ruin, an image staged for Yevgeny Khaldei's famous photograph on 2 May 1945, and scrawled their names in Cyrillic across the inner walls. If you look closely at the lower stonework today you can still find shrapnel and bullet scars, and inside, on a dome visit, that Soviet graffiti was deliberately kept rather than cleaned off when the building was rebuilt in the 1990s.

Then came the quiet decades. The shell sat in West Berlin with its dome gone, patched up in a plain 1961 to 1971 restoration and left flat-roofed and half-empty, because the real parliament met in Bonn and the Berlin Wall ran directly behind the building. For thirty years this was a monument on a dead-end street. The one great moment came in the summer of 1995, when the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the entire Reichstag in silver fabric for two weeks and about five million people came to see it, just before the rebuild finally began.

The bombed-out Reichstag on 3 June 1945, the Dem Deutschen Volke inscription still legible above the ruined columns and rubble.

The Reichstag on 3 June 1945. You can still read "Dem Deutschen Volke" above the wreckage, the same four words that survive on the building today.

After: a democracy you can walk over

The Reichstag you actually visit is Norman Foster's, rebuilt between 1994 and 1999. His design kept the old scarred outer walls, graffiti and all, but gutted the inside and crowned it with a walk-up glass dome sitting directly over the debating chamber. The German parliament, the Bundestag, sat here again for the first time on 19 April 1999.

The dome is not decoration. Standing in clear glass above the room where laws are made, with a mirrored cone bouncing daylight down into the chamber, it is a deliberate statement: the citizens are physically above their politicians, and they can watch. Walk up the spiral ramp and you also get one of the best free views in Berlin, straight across the government quarter, the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate.

Inside Norman Fosters glass dome on the Reichstag, the mirrored central cone and the spiral ramp with visitors walking up.

Inside the dome: the mirrored cone throws light into the chamber below, and the ramp lets anyone walk up over the seat of German democracy.

Read the layers off the stone yourself

Once you know the eras are there, the fun is finding them on the real building. I built a small tool for exactly that. Pick an era and it tells you what happened, whether a trace still survives today, and where to look when you are standing in front of the Reichstag, from the imperial towers to the war scars to the glass dome.

How to actually get inside

The dome and roof terrace are free, but you cannot just walk up. You have to register in advance through the official German Bundestag visitor service, giving the full name and date of birth of everyone in your group. On the day, each visitor aged 16 or over shows the passport or ID card they registered with, so bring it.

A few practical notes so a great free visit does not fall apart at the door:

Book as early as you can. Slots open a few months ahead and the popular late-afternoon and evening times fill fast in summer.
The dome is open daily from 8:00 until midnight, with last admission at 21:45. Going near sunset gives you the view in daylight and the city lighting up as you come down.
No booking? Try the Visitors' Service centre in the small pavilion just south of the building. It can issue same-day or next-few-days passes, but it must be at least two hours before your visit and it sells out on busy days.
Bring the exact ID you registered. A name that does not match the passport is the most common reason people get turned away.

For the full step-by-step on booking, timing and what to expect at security, I go deeper in my guide to visiting the Reichstag dome for free.

Where this fits on a Berlin walk

The Reichstag sits in a tight cluster of the city's heaviest history. The Brandenburg Gate is a short walk south, the Holocaust Memorial just beyond it, and the line where the Berlin Wall once stood runs right behind the building. Read together, they tell the same before-and-after story the Reichstag tells on its own.

My free two-hour walking tour starts on the other side of the centre, at Alexanderplatz, and works through the historic core of former East Berlin, so it does not pass the Reichstag itself. But if you want to understand how the divided city fits together before you come here, that is exactly the ground the tour covers, and the layers you learn to read on the tour are the same ones standing in this one facade. If Cold War Berlin is your thing, my guide to Cold War Berlin in five key locations is a good next step.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.

The Reichstag at sunset from the west, with its glass dome: Ansgar Koreng, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Reichstag around 1900 with its original dome and the Bismarck monument: Unknown (period photograph), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Reichstag burning on the night of 27 February 1933: Unknown (period photograph), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The ruined Reichstag on 3 June 1945 after the Battle of Berlin: No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit (Sgt Hewitt), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Inside Norman Foster’s glass dome, with the mirrored cone and spiral ramp: Perituss, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.