Darmstadtium

Digging for the foundations turned up a defensive tower and a stretch of the medieval city wall, and rather than clear them the builders left them where they were: they stand today inside the foyer and two of the conference rooms. The Viennese architect Talik Chalabi designed the house for the city and its technical university, and it opened on 6 December 2007. Its name was won in a public competition and belongs to the chemical element darmstadtium, first made at the GSI heavy-ion laboratory on the edge of town — a congress centre named after an atom that exists for milliseconds. The largest hall seats 1,677 in theatre format; twenty-one further rooms surround it. Darmstadt's musical reputation rests on the summer courses for new music, but the darmstadtium's own concert programme is broader, and popular gala evenings play here as readily as conferences.