GERMANY: A prized jewel returns to Berlin's crown this week when the Bode Museum, one of the city's Kaiser-era architectural marvels, reopens after a six-year face-lift.
The century-old structure with its signature dome is perched at one end of the "museum island" in the centre of town and is home to a unique collection of Byzantine and Coptic art as well as works from the National Gallery collection.
The Bode is the latest stage in an extraordinary engineering project to restore the entire museum complex, at a cost of €1.2 billion.
"In these times of tight budgets . . . many will ask: don't you want to spend the money on something else?" asked Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I say: precisely in the age of globalisation it's important for all of us to know where we come from and what the roots of our values are."
As Berlin's low wattage glitterati flock to the museum opening on Thursday, city mayor Klaus Wowereit will be sitting before Germany's highest court with his begging bowl.
He's hoping the constitutional court will rule that the German capital qualifies for a hand-out from the federal government and the wealthier federal states because of its debt, a dizzying €61 billion.
It's hard to conceive how the debt for a city state could reach a level where 29 cent of every euro raised in tax revenue goes on loan interest payments.
And yet property speculation in the 1990s burned up hundreds of millions of deutschmarks, as did Berlin's post-1989 governments, in denial that the billions of Bonn aid to keep the walled West Berlin alive had stopped flowing completely by 1995.
Berlin has presented itself to the court as a reformed sinner, a savvy spendthrift that needs a hand-up, not a hand-out. The city- state government has consolidated the budget by cutting spending to the bone, reflected in ill-tended grass verges and parks, overflowing bins and a shortage of 1,000 teachers at Berlin schools.
Lawyers for Berlin are hoping for a win, pointing to precedents in the 1990s when the federal government bailed out two other state governments to the tune of €15 billion. If the same calculations were used today, Berlin could look forward to twice that.
But budgets are tighter now than in the 1990s and the other federal states argue that another hand-out will only encourage other spendthrift state governments to keep spending.
The Christian Democrat (CDU) state leaders, in particular, are loath to give free money to Berlin after the state government of Social Democrats (SPD) and post-communist Left Party/PDS won last month's state election with promises of free kindergarten places and opposition to university tuition fees.
It is likely the constitutional court may decide in Berlin's favour, but with awkward strings attached. The ruling may also renew the campaign to get rid of Berlin's embarrassingly amateur politicians and turn it into a federal-run capital like Washington DC. That, and the restored Bode Museum, would enrich Berlin.