Konzertkirche Neubrandenburg

Fire took the Marienkirche on 29 April 1945, when the centre of Neubrandenburg burned; only the four outer walls and the tower masonry were left standing. The brick Gothic church, begun soon after the town's founding in 1248, then waited three decades before repairs started in 1975 and another twenty before its future was settled. A competition in 1996 gave the commission to the Finnish architect Pekka Salminen, whose concert hall was set inside the surviving shell and opened on 13 July 2001 with Brahms and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. It seats 850, is admired for its acoustics, and serves as home to the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic, which gives some thirty concerts there in a season.