Kieler Schloss

Built to guard a newly founded town in about 1242, Kiel's castle passed from the counts of Schauenburg to the Danish crown, and Duke Adolf I turned the fortress into a Renaissance residence between 1558 and 1568. Domenico Pelli rebuilt the west and south wings for the duchess Friederike Amalie in the 1690s; from 1721 the Gottorf dukes made it their principal seat, and Prince Heinrich of Prussia lived there from 1888 until 1918. The air raid of 4 January 1944 burnt it out to the foundation walls. A competition in 1957 went to the architects Sprotte and Neve, who raised the east wing again in brick between 1961 and 1963, keeping the old dimensions on the old footings but making no attempt at pastiche. What resulted is a modern building inside a medieval outline, with a concert hall and a broadcasting studio at its centre, working through several hundred events in an ordinary year.