This month German President, Joachim Gauck, formally marked the start of construction to recreate the Hohenzollern Palace in Berlin, to be named the Berlin Palace.

Once one of the grandest buildings in the world, it was home to the Hohenzollern kings and eventually became the Palace of the Republic. The palace was severely damaged in World War II and subsequently demolished by the East German government in 1950.

The palace rebuild forms part of the large scale Berliner Schloss-Humboldtforum (Berlin City Palace/Humboldt Forum) construction project in the centre of the German capital.

The German government will fund most of the €590m (£502m, US$787m) project which is being coordinated by the Berlin Palace-Humboldtforum Foundation, the ultimate owners of the building. The foundation represents the interests of the three partners in the project: the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the Central and Regional Library Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin.

As was done with the reconstruction of the Bundestag or German Parliament building, the façade of the palace will be recreated while the interior structure will be a contemporary design by Italian architect, Franco Stella.

A visitors centre, known as the Humboldt-Box, has been built onsite to reveal the project's scope and conceptual plan. Here visitors can view films, models and plans in an exhibition space which shows the palace, palace grounds, the reconstruction of the baroque façade and the new interior design by Stella.

Construction is expected to be completed by 2019.