"Wrapped Reichstag by Christo & Jeanne Claude" Berlin Travelogue by sabsi

In the summer of 1995 Christo and his wife Jeanne Claude finally made their dream come true and finished this big project - to wrap the German Reichstag - the building which hosts our parliament is now.

Christo's made first plans to wrap a public building like this in 1961, 1972 he asked for permission to wrap the Reichstag. After three refusals he finally gets the permission by the German parliament (Bundestag) in 1994.

Wrapped Reichstag

You don't know how glad I am that I had the chance to see the Wrapped Reichstag...

On one of the last days me and two friends jumped into a car in the morning because we were sure that we wouldn't want to miss this unique event! It was worth the long drive because it was really impressive. We walked around the building with our eyes and mouths wide open :)

It was nice how this was pure art - as the artists do not accept sponsorship there was no funfair atmosphere - apart from a lot of people it was quiet, no Bratwurst stands or Merchandising sold. Wonderful!

Wrapped Reichstag

This is what it looked like....

...and this is what it was built like

Wrapped Reichstag Fabric

100,000 square metres of fabric were necessary to wrap the building. The fabric was aluminium coated.

70 panels of fabric were then sewn together by three companies. They were brought onto the roof of the Reichstag on my birthday, the 16th of June 1995. 90 professional climbers and 120 installation workers helped affixing the panels.

Everybody who visited the wrapped Reichstag got a little piece of Fabric as a memory - for free! What a nice idea! I scanned mine for you!

Wrapping the Reichstag

On June 18th at 5 am the unfurling of the fabric began simultaneously on the four facades. The panels were connected by the climbers. Later they were fixed with the blue rope. 15,600 metres of blue rope were necessary for the whole thing.

The wrapping of the Reichstag was completed on June 24th and remained wrapped for 14 days. All meterial was recycled afterwards.

You can see some of the building work on the postcards I scanned for you.