About this place
Rising from Breiter Weg near the Cathedral, the Grüne Zitadelle is the last building fully conceived by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who signed off the plans shortly before his death in 2000 and never lived to see it built. Opened on 3 October 2005 on the site of a demolished East German concrete slab block, this soft pink palace was his rebellion against what he called a sea of rational houses. Its walls undulate, its corners are rounded, no two of its windows share the same shape, and its floors deliberately rise and fall underfoot. The roof is a planted meadow of grass and trees, while so called tree tenants root inside the apartments and reach their branches out through the windows. Far from a museum piece, it is a living quarter of fifty five apartments, shops, cafés, a restaurant, a hotel, a kindergarten and two hidden courtyards, one of them graced by a fountain.
Key facts
- 2005 year — Opened on 3 October, five years after Hundertwasser's death
- 55 apartments — Residential units share the building with shops, a hotel, a kindergarten and cafés
- 27 million euros — The cost of building Hundertwasser's last completed design
📍 Arthur-Ruppin-Straße, 39104, Magdeburg