Pamukkale

Pamukkale, meaning "cotton castle" in Turkish, is a natural site and tourist attraction in south-western Turkey‘s Inner Aegean region, which enjoys a temperate climate over the greater part of the year.

To honor the large turkish population in Berlin’s district of Kreuzberg, in 1998 it was decided to build a fake Pamukkale in Kreuzberg’s Görlitzer Park at a cost of about two million Euro.

The artist Wigand Witting did a fine job, the Berlin Pamukkale soon becoming a major meeting point for the folks of Kreuzberg. He only did miss one fine detail. He imported the neccesary limestone from Portugal, where they also have a very moderate climate, just like in the south of Turkey.

But in Berlin – not located in southern Europe – the temperature in January/February can get well below freezing point, which is no good for wet Portuguese limestone. So the Pamukkale is destroyed more and more each winter by frost. As Berlin by now is Germany's most indebted city (the debt amounting to a staggering 60,000,000,000 Euros in January 2008), there is no money to do anything about it. The artist also doesn’t want to pay.

So now Berlin has a new point of interest: The mock ruins of Pamukkale.

>>> more about Turkey's Pamukkale