Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition is planning to delay the reconstruction of Berlin’s historic royal city palace due to the overstretched national budget, but most Berliners don’t want it back anyway, media reports said on Wednesday.
Construction of the elaborate €552 million palace, known as the Stadtschloss in German, was set to begin in 2011 and take several years, but government sources told daily Rheinische Post that this plan was now in doubt.
The original Baroque palace, a winter residence for Prussian royalty, was damaged during World War II and then demolished by the communist East German government in 1950.
