Yet, perhaps because the past still rings like a warning – and is still physically visible in the topography and architecture of the city today – Berlin is striking in its simplicity, its radiant modernity (symbolized by the glass dome of the Reichstag, a conception of the British architect Norman Foster), and, above all, its intensity. That positive energy contrasts starkly with the decadent beauty of Paris, a city that is on a path of “museification.”