Återuppbyggnaden i Tyskland efter kriget har varit fantastisk

Berlin, like most cities in Germany, lay in ruins when World War II came to an end.

During World War II, carpet-bombing by Allied forces leveled up to 80 percent of the historic buildings in Germany's main cities in an unprecedented wave of destruction prompted by the no less unprecedented barbarity of the Nazis. Here, an aerial shot of Cologne taken in 1945.

After the war, a debate broke out in Germany over whether to rebuild exact copies of old buildings or to radically depart from pre-war Germany. Many felt that exact reproductions were tantamount to acting as if the war had never happen. Others felt that radical modernism ignored centuries of pre-war German history. Some projects, like the Neues Museum in Berlin, pictured here after a 1943 bombing raid, managed to find the balance between those two views.

Here, the Neues Museum on the day of its reopening in 2009. The museum combines elements of the original building with modern accents. It preserves the ravages of war and pollution, providing an impressive fusion of the old and the new and simultaneously celebrating both ruins and contemporary construction.