30 St Mary Axe aka ‘The Gherkin’ was opened on the 28 April, 2004, yet is still under construction in the satellite photo (I’ve been saying that a lot recently). Wikipedia goes into detail of all the clever designs incorporated into the 180m tall building and has a few ground level photos.

Just down the road is Tower 42 which, at 183m, is the tallest building in the City of London. It was formerly know as the NatWest tower (when it housed the bank’s head office) and was designed to resemble the NatWest logo when viewed from above.

Thanks: Stephen Train & Jonathan Rawle

Still under construction in the satellite photo, Torre Agbar was inaugurated by the king of Spain just a couple of months ago on the 16th September 2005. The 142m tall building houses the Barcelona Water Company and has more than 4,000 LEDs for spectacular night-time illuminations.

This ground level photo shows the completed building, which to me looks a lot like the “Gherkin” building in London.

Thanks: Daniel Salom

Update: A couple of our readers have pointed out some inaccuracies with this post, which I intend to address. Firstly, we accept that we quoted incorrect information, and that the Nazi party never did much of anything with the Reichstag… except burn it down of course. We must also accept that our readers are right that, in US political terms, a closer comparison to the German Bundestag would be the House of Representatives, and not the Senate… basically because we don’t know what either of them do. And finally, we failed to mention that it was Christo who wrapped the Reichstag due to our own naive assumption that people would have prior knowledge of his work, and would make the mental leap to connect the two. Our apologies on all three counts.

Opened in 1894, the Reichstag is home to the German Bundestag (’Parliament’ in the UK, or ‘Senate’ in the US).

The Reichstag is named for the original German Parliament which convened here until 1933, after which it became home to Hitler’s Nazi Party. The building was set on fire that year, which led to the passing of the infamous Reichstag Fire Decree, a bill which effectively suspended most basic human rights, and introduced the death penalty for a large number of offenses.

Since then the building has been ruined, been rebuilt (with a fabulous new rooftop dome), been an exhibition centre, been wrapped in fireproof polypropylene fabric, and finally been reconstructed again.

And that’s just the edited highlights! Check the Wikipedia page for the full story.

A little to the west you can see the Bundeskanzleramt (the chancellor’s office), which is known locally as Waschmaschine (washing machine) and according to Wikipedia, is the largest government HQ in the world (although that doesn’t seem to make sense to me…)

Thanks to Alexander Ilg, Lars, Serge Lyubomudrov, Frank Castle, Sebastian J, Patrik Renmark and Robert.

This is the Soviet War Memorial in Tiergarten, Berlin. The inscription on the side of the memorial reads:

Eternal glory to heroes who fell in the struggle against the German fascist invaders for the freedom and independence of the Soviet Union

The memorial consists of a semi-circular set of arches and is topped with a bronze Russian soldier. It’s also flanked by what are supposedly the first two Red Army tanks to enter the city in 1945 (you can just make them out at either side of the bottom of our thumbnail).

This memorial is just one of the many reminders of Berlin’s liberation from Nazism by the Red Army, and the presence of Russian troops in East Berlin until 1994.

Here’s a site dedicated to war memorials which has some good ground-level shots and some atrocious spelling.

Thanks to Adam Parker, Thomas, Heath, Thomas Ãœbermeier, Michael von Klitzing, Paul, Jim Rittenhouse, Michael and Matthias.