Louis Kolitz was a German genre painter active from the 1860s until his death shortly before the outbreak of the First World War; from 1879 until 1911 he was the director of the art academy, today’s Kunsthochschule Kassel, when it was still housed inside the Palais Bellevue across the street from the Neue Galerie, which now holds much of his work. This painting depicts the façade of the Berliner Stadtschloss, the imperial home of the Hohenzollern dynasty that was badly damaged during the Second World War and then completely demolished in the 1950s. Its ongoing reconstruction, which began in 2013, has been contested and widely debated. When it (re)opens in 2019, it will be known as the Humboldt Forum, home to Berlin’s substantive collection of non-European art.