Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom)

Kaiser Wilhelm II raised the present Berlin Cathedral between 1894 and 1905 as a Protestant answer to St Peter's in Rome and a monument to the Hohenzollern dynasty, whose crypt beneath holds around 90 members of the royal house in ornate sarcophagi. Its towering dome dominated the Museum Island skyline. In May 1945, in the last days of the Battle of Berlin, a bomb pierced the lantern of the dome and started a fire that gutted the interior. During the Communist era the ruin decayed for decades in East Berlin, partly demolished; reconstruction spanned 1975 to 1993, with the dome rebuilt in simplified form. Today its restored galleries and the vast Sauer organ of over 7,000 pipes crown the reunified city.