Lost Buildings 1 - Alexandria and Berlin

Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989
(photo from thecommune.co.uk)

All around the world, buildings vanish every day, as do other manmade structures. Some losses are notable. Nobody is likely to mourn the loss of the Berlin Wall, which for 28 years divided not just the city of Berlin but the surrounding countryside for 100 miles, before inexorable political change led to it being torn down in 1989.

On the other hand, the Ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was deliberately burned down by Christian fanatics in 391 AD after Emperor Theodosius outlawed 'paganism'. This barbaric act lead to the loss of a thousand years of learning.  It was only with the 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual translation, 22 years later, that the way to read the hieroglyphic writing of the Ancient Egyptians was re-learned.




The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2006 (my Photo)

I saw the Berlin wall as a teenager and happily re-visited, with my own children in July 1990, to observe its demise. There was some left then and I have a piece which I picked up from beside the Brandenberg Gate. And as if to celebrate a brave new world, in Egypt the Library of Alexandria, lost almost 1700 years ago, was finally replaced by a superb new library, designed in 1989 by Norwegian architects from the Olso and New York Snǿhetta practice.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Interior 2006 (my Photo)

This modern building, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which I was lucky enough to visit in 2006, is a beautiful low pyramid of glass and steel housing a multilingual library. It seemed popular and well used when I visited, I sincerely hope that Egypt's current political, religious and social disruption doesn't damage this beautiful and essential  repository of learning.  The Egyptian people deserve to live with education and erudition freely available and if it can remain associated with great architecture, so much the better.

Between the world famous extremes of the Berlin Wall and the Great Library of Alexandria, many smaller, less significant structures also fall, sometimes almost unnoticed and their loss is often nothing to do with either religion or politics. I'll talk about some of them in a week or two.