Post: #51

London in 60s:




London now:

Post: #52

(01-16-2016 12:20 PM)Laurifer Wrote:  A good portion of southern Germany escaped allied bombing, so Stuttgart and Munich are supposed to be well preserved.

My hometown Munich was actually bombed to ashes. 90% of the old town including most historic buildings were in ruins or heavily damaged. The most essential sights such as the cathedral, new city hall and historic churches throughout the old town have been rebuilt, whilst almost all commerical and residential buildings and even many museums and public buildings such as courts etc even in the heart of the city are poor and ugly post-war 1950s and 1960s construction to fill up the many hundreds of streets that had to be completely razed after bombing (or were, in fact, razed by bombing already). Even some buildings might look historic, but they aren't. The tower of the old city hall for example is a complete rebuild that was finished for the Olympic Summer Games of 1972. The rebuild is not even 100% accurate to the old architecture. You of course might still find a significant amount of historic buildings in Munich, but they are usually rebuilt and there is not really a single block that consists out of them; they are scattered in between endless blocks of cheap post-war construction that had to be put up fast to make a city of back then almost 1 million people work again.

In general, in most if not all larger cities of Germany you will see mainly this ugly post-war construction instead of the beautiful historical impression these cities had before WWII, much like Prague today still has.

The best-preserved larger cities might include Lübeck which was mostly spared from allied bombing because of some Red Cross deal, as well as Heidelberg which the US forces picked to leave intact to live there after the war (Heidelberg castle was not destroyed during WWII but much earlier). Other than that, really intact and original old towns you will only find in small cities with a max. of 50,000 residents that have been spared of bombing because they were too small or unimportant (in the last weeks of the war, the allied forces even started to bomb down systematically on cities as small as 50,000 people because everything bigger was already in ashes and they had nothing else to attack any more). Rothenburg/Tauber is a well-preserved example as well as Marburg/Lahn and Bamberg.

Post: #53

(01-19-2016 01:12 PM)goldenhinde Wrote:  My hometown Munich was actually bombed to ashes. 90% of the old town including most historic buildings were in ruins or heavily damaged.

I actually spent a few years there - it's my favorite major city in Germany by far. I think they did a pretty decent job rebuilding it in particular the center near Marienplatz has been mostly restored. Anyway, here's a clip of how Munich looked like in 1945 after the Allied Forces took over:

Post: #54

(01-17-2016 12:56 PM)storm Wrote:  I was in frankfurt two or three years ago and I thought it was beautiful. The main square honestly looked just like your picture. Here is a modern photo from the wikipedia page.



My understanding is that there were detailed architectural records from which the germans carefully reconstructed the old architecture. I was sure it was the vast majority, and am confident that if we do a google search we can actually get a number for how much was preserved.

A respect for antiquity is all well and good but as far as I've seen all of these building are still there. There are other building which are more modern... one can argue that the architecture allowed for by modern styles is ugly and uninspiring but that is not what people are saying in this thread.

Sure these houses are nice. But they are quite literally the only row of old houses in the entire city of Frankfurt!

Post: #55

(01-19-2016 06:23 PM)churros Wrote:  Sure these houses are nice. But they are quite literally the only row of old houses in the entire city of Frankfurt!

Frankfurt is one of the ugliest cities I have been in my life - and I have been to Houston.

Post: #56

It doesn't just take war to fuck things up..In the UK there was a lot of vandalism of great structures by "modernist" architects.

One of the most galling examples is entrance to Euston Station, with the Euston Arch. It went from this



to this



Fuck modernism...

Post: #57

(01-19-2016 12:33 PM)Krieg Wrote:  London in 60s:




London now:

A lot of London in the 1960s was bombed out slums from WW2.

The BNP is a racist organization...East London was always shitty until the regeneration started in the 1980s. Even the shitty areas like Newham and Walthamstow are expensive to buy in now.

Post: #58

It's not just Europe that fucks their architecture up, war or no war;

Penn Station NYC before;




Penn Station now (It's actually under Madison Square Garden);