Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof

Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station of the German city of Stuttgart, was completed in 1928 to a design by the architect Paul Bonatz, working with Friedrich Eugen Scholer, in a stripped-down Neoclassical style built from rough-hewn limestone blocks that gave the building a deliberately monumental, fortress-like character distinct from the more ornate stone stations common elsewhere in Europe at the time. Its tall clock tower, topped by a rotating three-dimensional Mercedes-Benz star since the 1950s, has become one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. The station has been at the center of Stuttgart 21, a large and long-contested infrastructure project begun in the 2010s to convert the historic terminus station into an underground through station, a plan that triggered major public protests over the demolition of parts of Bonatz's original station building and the loss of its adjoining park. Portions of the historic station's side wings were demolished as part of the project even as its central hall and tower, protected as a listed monument, were retained.