Grüne Zitadelle (Green Citadel)

Hundertwasser's last building — a flamboyant residential complex with trees growing from the rooftops

Address Breiter Weg 9, 39104 Magdeburg

The Grüne Zitadelle is the last building designed by the Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, completed in 2005 after his death. It is, characteristically, impossible to mistake for anything else: a pink-and-ochre blob of a building with golden onion domes, undulating facades, trees growing from balconies and rooftops, and not a right angle to be found anywhere. Hundertwasser called it an "oasis for humanity and nature in a sea of rational houses."

The building is a functioning residential and commercial complex — apartments, offices, shops, a hotel, a cafe, and a theater are all inside. The interior is equally idiosyncratic: irregular floors, mosaic-covered columns, and rooms that seem to have grown organically rather than been designed. Guided tours run through the public areas; the courtyard is free to enter during the day.

Whether you find it delightful or alarming, it is genuinely unlike anything else in Germany. It stands on the Breiter Weg, Magdeburg's main shopping street, making it unavoidable if you walk the city center.

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Friedensreich Hundertwasser died in 2000 on a ship in the Pacific, just months after the design was approved and before construction began. He called the building a 'Haus der Menschheit und Natur' (house of humanity and nature) and insisted that grass, trees, and irregular surfaces were not decoration but essential to human psychological health — a protest against what he called the 'tyranny of the straight line.'

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