Imagine Berlin, a city of fragments and ghosts, a metropolis that inspired countless artists and witnessed uncountable murders. Imagine the most arrogant capital of Europe devastated by Allied bombs, then divided by a Wall. Imagine it reunited and reborn as one of the creative centers of the world.Berlin's streets resonate with the echo of lives lived, dreams realized and evils executed with such shocking intensity that they shake its fabric. Berlin tells its volatile history over five centuries through a series of intimate portraits of two dozen key residents: the medieval balladeer whose suffering explains the Nazi’s rise to power, the demonic and charismatic dictators who schemed to dominate Europe, the genius Jewish chemist who invented poison gas for First World War battlefields and then the death camps, and the iconic mythmakers like Christopher Isherwood, Leni Riefenstahl, and David Bowie. Alongside are portrayed some of the countless ordinary Berliners no one has heard of—the Scottish mercenary who fought in the Thirty Years War, the ambitious prostitute who refashioned herself as a baroness, the fearful Communist Party functionary who helped to build the Wall.Berlin is a history book like no other, with an originality that reflects the nature of the city itself.