Putin in Dresden

When Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Dresden Tuesday, his visit will mark a homecoming of sorts.

Putin spent five years in the eastern German city working as an agent for the notorious East German secret police, the Stasi.

Today, Dresden visitors can walk by the office building where Putin worked and the apartment block where he lived. But little else in Dresden, nicknamed the "Florence on the Elbe," has stayed the same.

A changed city

When Putin lived in Dresden, the Frauenkirche remained in ruins, destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. The domed church, beautifully restored, now dominates the city skyline.

Putin's visit, during which he will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, coincides with the city's 800th birthday celebrations.

After Putin was selected to succeed Boris Yeltsin in 1999, journalists showed up in Dresden, looking for clues to Putin's life as a spy.

The KGB building where Putin had a first floor office is now a doctor's surgery area. The building has been extensively remodeled since its spy days. A three-meter (10-foot) high exterior wall used to shield the windows of the offices from view during the Cold War years, said Kerstin Waechter, who works in the doctor's office.

"It was renovated and extended as you can see from the exterior," Waechter said.

All the buildings nearby were also used by the KGB and the Stasi.

The KGB offices were less than a kilometer (half a mile) from Putin's former home, on Radebergerstrasse. While the apartment block remains largely unchanged, almost all the tenants are new. During Putin's time, the main tenants were Stasi employees. But after German reunification in 1990 almost all of them left, one of the current occupants said.

Remembering the spy

Although communist East Germany ceased to exist after reunification, Dresden residents can still be found who remember Putin.

"He was a good comrade, a man of strong convictions and very professional," said a former Stasi officer, recalling his one-time neighbor. "His words carried weight."

The former Stasi agent, a white-haired man in his 60s, who refused to identify himself, lived in the same apartment block as Putin. Although they didn't work together, "we often said hello and I shook his hand several times," the man said.

Gerhard Saupe, 74, whose friend lived across the landing from Putin in the apartment building said Putin "was well-liked."

Other former neighbors had less precise memories.

"It was only after he was elected Russian president that we remembered him," one said. "He was an officer at the barracks, but we didn't know what he did."