Berliner Fernsehturm

The Fernsehturm (German for "Television Tower") is a television tower in the centre of Berlin, Germany. It is a well-known landmark, close to Alexanderplatz.. The tower was built between 1965 and 1969 by the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), and its image was used as a symbol of Berlin by the GDR administration. The tower is easily visible throughout the central districts of Berlin, and remains a symbol of the city.The original total height of the tower was 365 m, but after the installation of a new antenna in the 1990s, the height is now 368 m. The Fernsehturm is the third largest structure in Europe, after Moscow's Ostankino Tower and Riga Radio and TV Tower. There is a visitor platform and a rotating restaurant in the middle of the sphere. The visitor platform is at a height of about 204 meters above the ground, and visibility can reach 25 miles(42km) on a clear day. The restaurant, which rotates once every twenty minutes, is a few meters above the visitors platform. (Originally it turned once per hour; the speed was later doubled, and tripled following the tower's late 1990s renovation.) Inside the shaft are two elevators for bringing visitors into the sphere section of the tower within 40 seconds.To mark the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, and the final match in Berlin Olympic Stadium, the sphere was decorated as a football; it is colored magenta, the corporate color of World Cup sponsor Deutsche Telekom, owner of the tower.