The demolition begins just a week and a half after lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament voted down a measure to halt demolition of the building, which had stood empty for a decade after unification but was reborn in 2003 as a popular entertainment venue.

The demolition, which is being led by the construction firm Ludwig Freytag, will continue through spring 2007 and is expected to cost upwards of 50 million Eur ($61 million).

The tear-down is expected to be complicated even though there were practically no historically important details in the building’s interior that might have been salvaged by historic preservationists. A 1990s asbestos removal project gutted the palace, removing the seats, lights, carpeting and other furnishings that were seen as state-of-the-art in their 1970s heyday.

Still, because of its position on the Spree, it must be taken apart bit by bit to avoid altering Berlin’s sensitive water table. Stress analysts warn that removing the 100,000-ton concrete foundation under the palace could send tremors to the neighboring Museum Island, the City Council building and the Berlin Cathedral.

Plans call for the palace to be replaced by a convention center with the historical façade of the 19th-century Baroque Berlin City Palace - though fundraising for that project has fallen fall short of its up to 940 million Eur ($1.14bn) price tag.

For years, discussion about the building’s future has been fuelled by disagreements between proponents of the City Palace and those who thought destroying the East German building smacked of historical censorship of Germany’s divided past.

But now, as the palace becomes history and various groups scramble to raise funds for the new building, observers project that the prime space it inhabited will remain little more than a vast expanse of green grass for years to come.