AFTER A DECADE of transition, Berlin, with its new skylines, now faces the challenges of its long-desired role as a metropolis. A period in which lack of normality was turned into an art form may be coming to an end. Simultaneously, the debate on the future of large cities in general makes it obvious that there is currently more at stake than one particular city. While increasingly open to new definitions and interpretations, cities still offer possibilities of liberation in a wide variety of forms (see Diederichsen 1999: 22). But in contrast to London, Paris, or Los Angeles, Berlin — together with Hong Kong — has the advantage that it is redefining itself out of political and historical necessity. An advertisement for the Expo 2000 close to the Brandenburg Gate was appropriate in more than one respect: in this historic setting, it proclaimed in four languages “You are now leaving the present.” It therefore came as a surprise that the 2001 exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis in the Tate Modern in London did not include Berlin. One reason for this can be found in the catalogue. Each city chosen, it says, “can be regarded as being both culturally distinct and emblematic of wider global tendencies” (Blazwick 2001: 13). Berlin, one could argue, is an exceptional case; indeed, that is something on which it has capitalized for a long time.