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The first City Palace had been built at the embankment of the river Spree from 1443 to 1451. At that time Berlin-Cölln counted about 8,000 inhabitants . In 1576, the bubonic plague killed about 4,000 people in the city.
During the Thirty Years' War ( 1618- 1648), Berlin's number of inhabitants shrank from 10,000 to 6,000.
In 1640 Frederick William took regency in the principality of Brandenburg. During his government Berlin reached 20,000 inhabitants and became significant among the cities in Central Europe for the first time.
A boulevard with six rows of trees was put on between the park Tiergarten and the Palace in 1647. The boulevard is called Unter den Linden.
Some years later (from 1674 on), the Dorotheenstadt was constructed in a bow of the river Spree northwest of the Spree-island where the Palace was situated. From 1688 on the Friedrichstadt was built and settled.
In January 18 1701, Frederick III was crowned King Frederick I in Prussia and made Berlin the capital of the new kingdom of Prussia.
In 1709, Berlin-Cölln was joined together with 'Friedrichswerder', the 'Dorotheenstadt' and 'Friedrichstadt' under the name of Berlin, with 60,000 inhabitants.
The overall impression one gets when visiting Berlin today is one of great discontinuity, visibly reflecting the many ruptures of Germany's difficult history in the 20th century. Although it was the residence of the Prussian kings, Berlin's population did not greatly expand until the 19th century, mainly after becoming the capital of the German Empire in 1871. It remained Germany's capital during the Weimar Republic and under the Nazis' Third Reich. During this period, Adolf Hitler had great plans to transform Berlin, because he thought that Berlin was one of the ugliest cities in the world, and he hated it. (Berlin was and is a center of left-wing political activity in Germany, and its residents largely opposed the Nazis' rise to power.) Therefore he and his architect Albert Speer made enormous plans for the new Berlin.
Around the place where the Reichstag lies today, they planned to construct an enormous dome, The Great Hall, 250 meters high and seven times broader than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was supposed to be large enough for 170,000 people, and the sweat and heat produced by those people was thought to be able to generate clouds and rain inside the dome. From the The Great Hall, a southbound avenue was planned, the Avenue of Victory, 23 meters wide and 5.6 km long. At the other end you would have had the new railway station and next to it Tempelhof Airport. Additionally, halfway down the avenue there would have been a huge arch 117 meters high, and so large that the Arc de Triomphe in Paris would fit inside it. It was projected to be a monument commemorating those fallen during World War I and World War II. The project was to finish in 1950, and Berlin was to be re-named "Germania" on that occasion. But the construction never started, as Hitler decided it would be madness to start such a project during a war. Hitler also thought the Allied airstrikes very practical, mostly because it made tearing down the old Berlin so much cheaper.
Today only a few structures bear witness to the large-scale plans of Germania. Hermann Göring's Reichsluftfahrtministerium (National Ministry of Aviation), Tempelhof International Airport, Olympiastadion, and a series of streetlights are all that remain of the Nazi architecture. Hitler's Reich Chancellry was demolished by Soviet occupation authorities, and the rubble was used to create the Soviet War Memorial at Treptower Park in Berlin.
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