Places to visit in Berlin
Though cut off by the Wall for thirty years, the eastern part of the city – the Mitte district – has always been the capital’s real centre. This is the city’s main sightseeing and shopping hub and home to many of the best places to visit in Berlin. Head here for inspiration on things to do in Berlin.
Most visitors begin their exploration on the city’s premier boulevard Unter den Linden, starting at the most famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, then moving over to the adjacent seat of Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. Unter den Linden’s most important intersection is with Friedrichstrasse, which cuts north–south.
At its eastern end Unter den Linden is lined by stately Neoclassical buildings and terminates on the shores of Museum Island, home to eastern Berlin’s leading museums, but its natural extension on the other side of the island is Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, which leads to a distinctively GDR-era part of the city around Alexanderplatz, the eastern city’s main commercial and transport hub.
Northwest from here, the Spandauer Vorstadt was once the heart of the city’s Jewish community, and has some fascinating reminders of those days, though today it’s best known for the restaurants, bars, boutiques and nightlife around the Hackescher Markt.
Back at the Brandenburg Gate, a walk south along the edge of the gigantic Tiergarten park takes you to the swish modern Potsdamer Platz, a bustling entertainment quarter that stands on what was for decades a barren field straddling the death-strip of the Berlin Wall.
Huddled beside Potsdamer Platz is the Kulturforum, an agglomeration of cultural institutions that includes several high-profile art museums. Also fringing the park are Berlin’s diplomatic and government quarters, where you’ll find some of the city’s most innovative architecture, including the formidable Hauptbahnhof.
The western end of the Tiergarten park is given over to a zoo, which is also the name of the main transport hub at this end of town. This is the gateway to City West, West Berlin’s old centre and is best known for its shopping boulevards, particularly the upmarket Kurfürstendamm.
Schöneberg and Kreuzberg, the two residential districts immediately south of the centre, are home to much of Berlin’s most vibrant nightlife. The former is smart and is popular as a gay area, while Kreuzberg is generally grungy and edgy.
Beyond Kreuzberg’s eastern fringes, and back in what used to be East Berlin is Friedrichshain which offers some unusual architectural leftovers from the Eastern Bloc of the 1950s, while to the north Prenzlauer Berg is one of the few places in which the atmosphere of prewar Berlin has been preserved – complete with cobbled streets and ornate facades.
Berlin’s eastern suburbs are typified by a sprawl of prewar tenements punctuated by high-rise developments and heavy industry, though the lakes, woodland and small towns and villages dotted around Köpenick offer a genuine break from the city.
The leafy western suburbs are even more renowned for their woodland (the Grunewald) and lakes (the Havel), with more besides: attractions include the baroque Schloss Charlottenburg, with its adjacent art museums; the impressive 1930s Olympic Stadium; the Dahlem museum complex, which displays everything from German folk art to Polynesian huts; and the medieval town of Spandau.
Further out, foremost among possible places to visit on day-trips are Potsdam, location of Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci palace, and the former concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin in Oranienburg.
Berlin Mitte - Alexanderplatz and around
During East Berlin’s forty-year existence, while Unter den Linden was allowed to represent Berlin’s glorious past, the area northeast of the Spreeinsel as far as major transport hub Alexanderplatz, was meant to represent the glories of a modern socialist capital city. It’s easily located thanks to its gigantic Fernsehturm, or TV Tower, and there’s almost no trace of an earlier history. Postwar rebuilding projects saw whole streets and neighbourhoods vanish under vast and dreary concrete plazas and buildings housing missable shops and cafés. Exceptions include two large prewar buildings, the Rotes Rathaus, seat of Berlin’s administration, and the Marienkirche, Berlin’s oldest church.
The Fernsehturm (Television Tower)
Looming over the Berlin skyline like a giant olive on a cocktail stick, the Fernsehturm (Television Tower) is Western Europe’s highest structure. This 365-metre-high transmitter was built during the isolationist 1960s, when East Berlin was largely inaccessible to West Germans, and was intended as a highly visible symbol of the GDR’s permanence. Having outlasted the regime that conceived it, the Fernsehturm has become iconic, and though few would champion its architecture, it does have a certain retro appeal. The tower provides tremendous views (40km on clear days) from the observation platform and the Tele-café. There are usually long queues to go up – early evening is your best bet.
Museumsinsel
At the northern tip of the Spreeinsel lies a museum quarter known as Museumsinsel (Museum Island), which was added during the nineteenth century by the Hohenzollerns and which really took off when German explorers and archeologists returned with bounty from the Middle East. Despite war losses and Soviet looting, some of the world’s finest museums reside here and they are becoming ever greater, thanks to a large-scale reorganization and remodelling that’s due for completion in 2015. Some sections will be temporarily closed as part of this process in the meantime. Covering any more than one of these museums in any depth in a day is a real challenge, so choose carefully before you set out – note too that you have to book a time to visit the Pergamon and Neues Museum at their ticket desks, so arrive early to ensure you can go at the time you want.
The Altes Museum
Overlooking the lawns of the Lustgarten, a former parade ground, lies one of Berlin’s most striking Neoclassical buildings: Schinkel’s impressive Altes Museum with its 87-metre-high facade and Ionic colonnade. As host to the city’s classical antiquities collection, this is the place for fans of ancient Greek and Roman pottery and sculpture. Many are small works but nonetheless captivating, such as The Praying Boy, a lithe and delicate bronze sculpture from Rhodes dating back to 300 BC. The Vase of Euphronios, decorated with athletes in preparation, is among one of the finest surviving Greek vases in the world.
The Neues Museum
After decades on the move around Berlin, the city’s impressive Egyptian Collection moved back into its original home in the Neues Museum in 2009. Built in 1855, the museum was badly damaged in the war then extensively rebuilt and remodelled under British architect David Chipperfield. He took pains to preserve as many original features as possible, including fluted stone columns and battered faux-Egyptian ceiling frescoes, as well as adding a few tasteful features – like the huge central staircase – to replace irreparably damaged parts of the building.
The museum’s greatest prize is the 3300-year-old Bust of Queen Nefertiti, a treasure that’s become a city symbol. There’s no questioning its beauty – the queen has a perfect bone structure and gracefully sculpted lips – and the history of the piece is equally interesting. Created around 1350 BC, the bust probably never left the studio in Akhenaten in which it was created, acting as a mere model for other portraits of the queen (explaining why the left eye was never drawn in). When the studio was deserted, the bust was left, to be discovered some three thousand years later in 1912.
A bit of a comedown after all the Egyptian excitement below is the Early and Prehistory Collection in the museum attic, encompassing a mainly underwhelming collection of archeological discoveries from around Berlin.
The Alte Nationalgalerie
Tucked just behind the Neues Museum, the Neoclassical Alte Nationalgalerie is a grandiose interpretation of a Corinthian temple that houses a museum of European art that’s particularly strong on nineteenth-century German Romantics, like Liebermann, though it also has great works by Cézanne, Rodin, Monet and Degas.
The Pergamonmuseum
The largest of the Museum Island museums, the massive Pergamonmuseum was built in the early twentieth century in the style of a Babylonian temple, primarily to house the city’s vast Middle-Eastern treasures. Highlights include the Pergamon Altar – a huge structure dedicated to Zeus and Athena, dating from 180 to 160 BC, and depicting a furious battle between the gods and the giants – as well as the enormous, deep-blue-tiled Ishtar Gate, a sixth-century-BC processional way from Babylon. The collection also numbers hundreds of other fascinating smaller items from as far back as 2000 BC.
The Bode-Museum
The stocky, neo-Baroque Bode-Museum at the northern tip of Museum Island suffered such heavy World War II damage that it was scheduled for demolition, until Berliners protested in the streets. Subsequent waves of renovation have resulted in opulent interiors that form a seamless backdrop for one of Europe’s most impressive sculpture collections, which spans the third to the nineteenth centuries. A particular strength is the early Italian Renaissance, though the German collection is equally authoritative. Also in the building is a solid collection of Byzantine art, notably early Christian religious items; ornamental Roman sarcophagi and several intricate mosaics and ivory carvings; and around half a million coins of the city’s Numismatic Collection.
Tiergarten
A huge swathe of peaceful green parkland smack in the middle of Berlin, the Tiergarten was originally designed by Peter Lenné as a hunting ground for Elector Friedrich III, but now provides a great antidote to city noise and bustle. Bus #100 between Bahnhof Zoo and Alexanderplatz crosses the park, but it’s best appreciated on foot or by bike. At least wander along the Landwehrkanal, and the pretty little group of ponds of the grand-sounding Neuer See. In summer the popular beer garden here, Café am Neuen See, rents out boats by the hour.
Siegessäule
Approached by great boulevards at the centre of the Tiergarten, is the eye-catching Siegessäule (Victory Column). Topped with a gilded Winged Victory, the column celebrates Prussia’s military victories. The mosaics at the column’s base show the unification of the German peoples and incidents from the Franco-Prussian War. The four bronze reliefs beside depict the main wars and the victorious marching of the troops into Berlin. The Siegessäule’s summit offers a good view of the surroundings, but is 285 stairs distant.
The Kulturforum
The Kulturforum, literally “culture-forum”, is an umbrella term that covers several art museums and cultural venues in the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park, which could easily fill a day of your time.
The Berlin Philharmonie
Many of the Kulturforum buildings were designed in the 1960s by Hans Scharoun, including the honey-coloured Philharmonie, home of the Berlin Philharmonic, with its complicated floor-plan and top-notch acoustics and views, regardless of your seat. Daily tours explore the interior of the building.
The Kunstgewerbemuseum
Over the road from the Philharmonie, the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts) holds an encyclopedic but seldom dull collection of European arts and crafts from the Middle Ages on. Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo pieces (wonderful silver and ceramics), along with Jugendstil, Art Deco and Bauhaus objects are all present, as are sumptuous pieces from the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance collections. Highlights are Lüneburg’s municipal silver and an eighth-century purse-shaped reliquary that belonged to Duke Widikund, leader of the Saxon resistance to Charlemagne.
The Gemäldegalerie
With its stupendous collection of early European paintings, the Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) is the real jewel of the Kulturforum. Highlights include German work from the Middle Ages and Renaissance such as the large Wurzach Altar of 1437, from the workshop of the great Ulm sculptor Hans Multscher; landscapes by Albrecht Altdorfer; and several superbly observed portraits by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger. The gallery’s Netherlandish section includes fifteenth- and sixteenth-century works by Jan van Eyck, Jan Gossaert, Quentin Massys and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose Netherlandish Proverbs is an amusing, if opaque, illustration of over a hundred sixteenth-century proverbs.
The later Dutch and Flemish collections, with their large portraits of Van Dyck and fleshy canvases of Rubens, are another strong point. But the major highlights are several paintings by Rembrandt: though The Man in the Golden Helmet has been proved to be the work of his studio rather than the artist himself, this does little to detract from the portrait’s elegance and power. Finally, the Italian section spanning the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, has impressive paintings by Botticelli, Caravaggio, Poussin, Claude and Canaletto.
The Kupferstichkabinett
Sharing its main entrance with the Gemäldegalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett (Engraving Cabinet) holds an extensive collection of European medieval and Renaissance prints, drawings and engravings. The collection includes Botticelli’s exquisite drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The Neue Nationalgalerie
At the southeast corner of the Kulturforum, and by far its finest building, is the Neue Nationalgalerie. Designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1965, the building comprises a severe glass box, its ceiling seemingly almost suspended above the ground. The gallery divides between the permanent collection, featuring works from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, including pieces by Braque, Gris and Picasso, and temporary exhibits, often of contemporary art.