Berlin

The Tauentzienstrasse beyond was like an avenue of shattered monuments. Through wide gaps between formless mounds of rubble, you got views over the great central desert of destruction, and saw the Sieges Saeule rising forlornly from the treeless, snow-covered plain of the Tiergarten, which was dotted with bizarre remnants of statuary: a uniformed general, a naked nymph on a horse. In the background, the skeleton of a railroad station showed up starkly; and against the blue winter sky, a red flag fluttered from the Brandenburger Tor, entrance to the Soviet sector. There was something doubly strange about this landscape. It is strange enough to see a vast city shattered and dead. It
is far stranger to see one that is briskly and teemingly inhabited, amidst its ruins. Berlin seemed convinced that it was alive; and, after a few hours there, you began to agree that it certainly was.

- Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories (1954 edition)

Other Berlins:
Max Reinhardt staged Oscar Wilde's Salomé in 1903 in Berlin. Heinrich von Kleist committed suicide on the shores of Kleiner (Little) Wannsee in 1811, near Potsdam, in what is now the distant outskirts of Berlin. Nearby is Sanssouci Palace, where Voltaire managed to offend Frederick the Great.