living at Berlin's birthplace

I just found out that Berlin sprang up around the church that's right outside my apartment building's front door. (I'm in Berlin for the month of April.) The church—Nikolaikirche, in Berlin's Mitte district—is the city's oldest.

Of course, there must have been something here before the people built a church capable of lasting hundreds of years. But still it's kind of neat to think of a city having a birthplace.

Bits of the church look like they've been replaced, probably after damage during the war. But I suppose the city itself has been blown up and cut in half, then mended, the halves reattached and further mended. So neither the church nor the city are the "original."