That’s a Wrap, Christo Says of the Reichstag : Germany: Workers endured a week of blustery winds and occasional drizzle to veil 101-year-old, war-scarred structure with 70 panels of lustrous silver fabric.

A knot here, a knot there. Except for tying a few big strings, Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag was complete Friday and working its magic.

Opinions ranged widely on the $11-million draping of Germany’s once and future parliament, one of Europe’s biggest art events of the year:

“Brilliant!”

“A sleeping grandfather.”

“A castle with a secret.”

“Should have spent the money on the Third World.”

Climbers and others involved in the massive project worked through a week of blustery winds and occasional drizzle to veil the 101-year-old, war-scarred Reichstag with 70 panels of lustrous silver fabric.

By Saturday afternoon, the final lengths of almost 10 miles of blue rope were to be in place to complete the wrapped-and-tied effect.

The wrapping comes off starting July 6. Then renovation begins so the Reichstag can house Germany’s Parliament when the government moves from Bonn by 2000.

Since they first sought permission to wrap the building in 1971, Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, have become known for such projects as dotting blue and yellow umbrellas around the California and Japanese countrysides and wrapping the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris.

The Reichstag was their “sleeping beauty.”

Berliners are more apt to call it a “klotz,” a block, or figuratively a monstrosity. The sandstone building has a foreboding air; its original graceful glass dome was not put back in a 1960s restoration, so the building is lower than its 445-foot front would seem to demand.

The Reichstag is sad evidence of Germany’s tortured path to democracy. It housed a weak parliament during the German Empire, and suffered a devastating fire in 1933 that gave Adolf Hitler a pretext to impose dictatorship.

In 1945, the Soviet Red Army focused its battle for Berlin on the Reichstag, and from 1961 to 1989 it stood beside the Berlin Wall as a museum and last sentinel on West Berlin’s side.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea to wrap the Reichstag. It’s the most historic building in Berlin and maybe in Germany, and now people are thinking about it,” said Jana Kuchinke-Hofer, a Berliner in her 20s.

“I thought at one point it was like a castle with a secret behind it, like in the fairy tales,” she said.

Is the wrap undignified, as opponents have claimed?

“It is,” Kuchinke-Hofer said, “but it’s still good to do it. It shows we’re not all that serious.”

Victoria Byczkiewicz from Los Angeles said it seemed like a “sleeping grandfather” was under the wrapping, which was like a “purification ritual” to purge the building of its ghosts.

Two French architecture students who came from Nantes to see Christo’s creation sketched busily in their notebooks to capture the drape of the 120,000 square yards of silver-gray fabric.

“When we got here yesterday and saw it, it was really beautiful. We were astounded,” said Jean-Marie Beslou, 23.

In what has been an impromptu holiday atmosphere, tens of thousands trampled the Reichstag’s lawn to watch climbers on long ropes set the fabric and its ties in place. Performance artists were entertaining the crowd, and one young Berliner was doing good business under the sign, “Christo and You”--wrapping people in golden foil and photographing them in front of the silver Reichstag.

To some, it was at best a curiosity. “I thought the money should go to the Third World, and I still think so,” said Sophie Haack, from Torgelow near the Polish border.

Haack said she isn’t convinced the wrapped Reichstag is beautiful. “But it does make the building and the area very interesting for a short time,” she said.