The Red Town Hall ( ) is the town hall of Berlin, Germany, located in the Mitte district on RathausstraÃÂe near Alexanderplatz. It is the seat to the Governing Mayor of Berlin and the government (the Senate of Berlin) of the state of the city.
The town hall was built between 1861 and 1869 in the style of the Northern Italy High Renaissance by Hermann Friedrich Waesemann. It was modelled on the Old Town Hall of Toruà Â, Poland, while the architecture of the tower is reminiscent of the cathedral tower of the Cathedral of Laon, France. It replaced several individual buildings dating from the Middle Ages and now occupies an entire city block.
The building was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II and rebuilt to the original plans between 1951 and 1956. The Neues Stadthaus, which survived the bombing and had formerly been the head office of Berlin's municipal fire insurance Feuersozietät in ParochialstraÃÂe served as the temporary city hall for the post-war city government for all the sectors of Berlin until September 1948. Following that time, it housed only those of the Soviet sector. The reconstructed Red Town Hall, then located in the Soviet sector, served as the town hall of East Berlin, while the Rathaus Schöneberg was the town hall of West Berlin. "Red Town Hall" (Rotes Rathaus) was also used figuratively to designate the socialist government of East Berlin, the . After German reunification, the administration of reunified Berlin officially moved into the building on 1 October 1991.