New National Gallery

The Neue Nationalgalerie sits as a massive, dark steel square held up by eight slender columns. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed this temple to modernism in the nineteen sixties to house twentieth-century art. When it opened, the building lacked interior walls, creating a wide, open exhibition hall where light pours through glass. Construction workers once hoisted the entire massive roof frame into place with synchronized hydraulic jacks, a feat that drew crowds to watch the heavy steel hover in the air.