The Secret Garden in Berlin - Join us on a tour with Real Estate Developer Dirk Moritz

Dirk Moritz, Real Estate Developer, Moritz Gruppe about The Secret Garden in Berlin:

"Sometimes I get the strong feeling, whether I come here alone or with the team, we're always changed when we leave it again.

"When we come out of here, everybody is in good humour. Even with all the dirt and rubbish, and with all the building work going on here, and knowing what it's all costing, I still have a good feeling about it all, and know that it has now become a part of us. And that's how we look at it now as well."

"Nobody believed that such a house could still be found in Berlin in 2012. And in Berlin Mitte, of all places."

"This is what I stumbled across in 2008, on a November evening. My eldest daughter wanted to go for a swim in the pool next door. But then, as if by magic, this door opened and I was drawn in to this dark back yard."

"The yard was full of rubbish and filth and old abandoned cars. The house was all walled up, like it is today. I couldn't really see anything clearly, but from one second to the next I fell head over heels in love."

"At least 300 pigeons had been living here undisturbed for 25 years. The floor was covered in at least 50cm of pigeon droppings."

"It later became a well-known location, known as Fritz Schmidt's Restaurant and Ballroom. The name was a bit long for us, even if we could have used it, which we cannot. So we're just calling it Secret Garden."

"Secret, because it's so well hidden away. And Garden, because it's here on the Gartenstrasse. We really wanted to preserve a piece of land right here in Berlin Mitte that is worthy of this garden."

"The Golden 20's, that was the era that Berlin and the rest of the world would love to recapture, when Berlin was the centre of Europe for entertainment. People went out all the time for amusement then, and I imagine there was entertainment here every evening."

"We've been hugely fortunate in being able to take over a whole working team from the New Museum to work here. And we've been able to get them at a price which we can afford to pay. They are removing layer after layer to get down to the basic walls beneath."

"The real challenge here is to get the right combination of old and new – what to leave, what not to leave, how much to go into the layers of paint."

"We've also been really lucky that, with the blessing of the Berlin historic monuments protection authority, we can actually open up the windows right down to the floor. We're really excited by the fact that, for the first time in 45 years, sunlight will stream into this room."

"Although this is our first building project, we've put in a huge effort on this and are still within our budget. I'm always happy to say, if we would sometimes think a bit more and put in a bit more sweat, it's always possible to find a solution. We don't always have to do things the way we've been doing them for twenty years."

"For a place like this, you have to find a very special tenant to make a suitable match. Of course, it would have been much easier to simply make apartments out of the place."