The new US embassy in Berlin was opened Friday by America's last Cold War leader in a nostalgia-laden ceremony marking the mission's return to the site it last occupied in 1941.
Former president George H.W. Bush, who was in the White House when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, cut a ribbon at the embassy that was rebuilt in the former no man's land that divided Berlin during the communist era.
Fireworks, Broadway standards and speeches by Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were to round off festivities at the new mission that took four years and 130 million dollars (65.6 million euros) to build.
The old embassy was bombed during World War II and its ruins later razed by East German authorities to make place for the Wall.
Returning to the same address in a reunited capital was a symbolic move for West Germany's Cold War ally but also proved controversial as Berliners objected both to the aesthetics of the building and US security demands for the site.
The United States initially isisted on a 30-metre (100-foot) security perimeter around the embassy, something that would have required a central street to be moved and encroached on a historic park.
Berlin authorities accused the Americans of riding roughshod over the city's landscape while US officials said the Germans appeared ungrateful after four decades of protection during the Cold War.
Eventually the State Department settled for a slimmer buffer zone.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung has mockingly called the stark, imposing building with its bullet-proof windows "Fort Knox at the Brandenburg Gate."
"One can stroll along all sides of the complex for as long as you like, but the feeling that it is all very unfortunate won't go away," the daily commented Friday.
But US diplomats have defended the design and said the embassy is a testament to US support for Germans during the Cold War and to improved transatlantic ties following the row between Washington and Berlin over the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In a speech on the eve of the inauguration, Bush said he believed US-German ties were stronger than ever.
"My son is under a lot of pressure as president of the United States," he said at the American Academy in Berlin after receiving the Henry Kissinger Prize.
"One of the things I draw great comfort from is the truly excellent ties with your chancellor for whom I have a lot of respect," he said of German leader Angela Merkel.
The event, which coincided with US Independence Day, was attended by US pilots who took part in the Berlin Airlift 60 years ago when the Allies flew in over two million tonnes of supplies to West Berlin after it was blockaded by the Soviet Union.
Merkel on Friday said she wanted to express her "sincere, heartfelt thanks" to the US for it support, which she believed altered the course of history.
And Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in an editorial in Der Tagesspiegel, called for "a new departure in the transatlantic relationship" allowing Germany and the US to solve international problems.
German commentators have focused on the fact that the embassy completes the reconstruction of Pariser Platz, the grand square that was flattened during World War II and lay barren during the Cold War.
But Berlin's coordinator for US-German relations, Karsten Voigt, said for Americans the emphasis was on freedom and solidarity, symbolised by the adjoining Brandenburg Gate where former US president Ronald Reagan famously urged his Soviet counterpart: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Voigt pointed out that unlike his son, Bush has remained a popular figure in Germany because of his fulsome support for reunification.
Bush on Thursday recalled how he struggled to convince former French president Francois Mitterand and ex-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that the time had come to unite West and East Germany.
"I can understand France and England being concerned but ... I thought the time was right to show our confidence by encouraging reunification.
"I dealt with Mrs Thatcher very carefully, that is how I always dealt with her. Francois, you know he said 'I like Germany so much I think there should be two of them'. They were not enthusiastic."
