In praise of ... reconstruction

There is a pleasure in some ruins that no complete structure can equal but a pleasure too in their reconstruction. No more so than in the case of Dresden's Frauenkirche, reduced to a grassy mound of blackened rubble by Allied attacks on the city in February 1945. As a symbol of what happened to Dresden and its inhabitants these ruins had a bleak power but their reconstruction after a remarkable international effort offers an even more powerful symbol of hope.

Last Sunday, just over 60 years after the church fell in the firestorm that followed the bombings, the Frauenkirche was reconsecrated in a service that brought together German, American and British worshippers and marked the end of its decade-long rebuilding. They were not there to debate the rights and wrongs of the attack on the city but to commemorate a remarkable spiritual and artistic achievement.

The new Frauenkirche is no pastiche of what stood before but much the same building, using many of the original stones and the architect, George Bähr's, surviving plans. It has brought a sense of completion and renewal to a bruised city and offers an example to others, such as Afghanistan, which is considering replacing the lost Bamiyan buddhas. Not everything from the past that has been lost can be reconstructed, or should be, but the return of Dresden's Frauenkirche is a fine act which has helped heal an open wound and encourage one of Europe's great cities to look to the future.