Visitors to Berlin have dozens of museums and art galleries to choose from, to say nothing of the city's countless places of historical interest. But most tourists prefer to trudge through the mud and rubble of hundreds of building sites that have become the German capital's top attractions.
Guided tours of individual sites, bus tours of the main developments and bird's eye views of mud, foundations and sewage systems from helicopters and light aircraft are sold out every week as yesterday's eyesores become today's tourist shrines.
Visitors are unwelcome during the week while building work is underway but small groups tramp through the mud on the main sites every 30 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays. Most tourists head for the city centre but two-hour bus tours of large housing projects in the distant suburbs are fully booked too. And special trains have been laid on so that railway enthusiasts, with or without an anorak, can view new tracks being laid in the east of the city.
The reunification of Berlin and the decision to move the government from Bonn created a building boom that has transformed the city centre into a forest of cranes. The Reichstag is being hollowed out and radically redesigned as the new federal parliament by English architect Sir Norman Foster and a massive building programme is underway to house the chancellor, government departments and members of parliament nearby.
Work is underway on new British, French and US embassies next to the Brandenburg Gate and a gigantic new railway station is being built nearby to cater for a quarter of a million passengers every day. At Potsdamer Platz, a busy square that was reduced to a border wasteland after the second World War, Daimler Benz and Sony have invested more than £1 1/2 billion in developing a complex of shops and offices that created the biggest building site in Europe.
Part of the complex will open in October, including a 19-screen cinema and a huge theatre overlooking the newly-created Marlene Dietrich Platz.
Visitors can view the site from the top of the only surviving building, where a guide explains what is happening below, identifying which cranes belong to which projects. Some 100 yards away in the Info Box, a bright red square on stilts, maps, charts, video shows and interactive computer displays provide a picture of how Berlin will look five, 10 or 25 years from now. The Info Box attracts more visitors than any museum or art gallery in the city, as Berliners and tourists alike gaze in wonder at the new metropolis being born.
A short walk from Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, a cultural complex that has been under construction for 30 years. It houses the recently re-united painting collections from east and west Berlin, right next to the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Although the federal government will not move from Bonn until next year and much building remains to be done, the new Berlin is already taking shape in a way that affects the lives of ordinary citizens.
Friedrichstrasse, traditionally the city's main commercial street, became a drab row of public buildings under communist rule. Now almost completely rebuilt, it is introducing a new shopping culture to Berlin, a city where customers have long endured short opening hours, surly staff and a limited, unimaginative range of goods.
A breath of customer-friendly French air already blew into Berlin when the department store Galeries Lafayette opened on Friedrichsstrasse. Designed by the French superstar architect Jean Nouvel, Galeries Lafayette's elegant, curved glass facade conceals a complex inner structure built around giant glass cones. Like Nouvel's Cartier Building in Paris, the building combines daylight and internal light sources to create an astonishing sense of transparency and airiness.
Four circular shopping floors converge on a large, central glass cone with each floor laid out with a simple elegance that offers customers ease of access as well as the space to view the clothes, accessories, perfumes, food and wine available. The central cone is 33 metres tall, ending in a sharp point at the basement which many shoppers mistook for a litter bin until recently, flinging chocolate wrappers, used chewing gum and bus tickets into it from a circular balcony above.
Dozens of smart shops have since opened on Friedrichstrasse, along with numerous new restaurants and bars. As the city centre changes shape, the Berliners themselves appear to be changing a little, shaking off some of their traditional grumpiness and regaining the cosmopolitan air of the 1920's.
Throughout the ups and downs of its history, despite destruction and division, Berlin has never lost sight of its uniqueness. After all, there must be something special about a city that can persuade thousands of people to spend their holidays amid the dust and rubble of a giant building site.
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