Must-see attractions in Berlin & Brandenburg
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Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen
Around Berlin
About 35km north of Berlin, Sachsenhausen was built by prisoners and opened in 1936 as a prototype for other camps. By 1945, some 200,000 people had…
City West & Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg Palace is one of Berlin's few sites that still reflect the one-time grandeur of the Hohenzollern clan, which ruled the region from 1415 to…
Friedrichshain
Berlin’s oldest public park has provided relief from urbanity since 1840, but has been hilly only since the late 1940s, when wartime debris was piled up…
Berlin
This museum ranks among the world's finest and most comprehensive collections of European art with about 1500 paintings spanning the arc of artistic…
City West & Charlottenburg
Berlin's zoo holds a triple record as Germany's oldest (since 1844), most species-rich and most popular animal park. Top billing at the moment goes to a…
Berlin
Victims of Stasi persecution often ended up in this grim remand prison, now a memorial site officially called Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Tours …
Berlin
The rebirth of the historic Potsdamer Platz was Europe's biggest building project of the 1990s, a showcase of urban renewal masterminded by such top…
Kreuzberg
In a landmark building by American-Polish architect Daniel Libeskind, Berlin’s Jewish Museum offers a chronicle of the trials and triumphs in 2000 years…
Prenzlauer Berg
For an insightful primer on the Berlin Wall, visit this outdoor memorial, which extends for 1.4km along Bernauer Strasse and integrates an original…
Berlin
Berlin’s rulers used to hunt boar and pheasants in the rambling Tiergarten until garden architect Peter Lenné landscaped the grounds in the 19th century…
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart
Berlin
Berlin's contemporary art showcase opened in 1996 in an old railway station, whose grandeur is a great backdrop for this Aladdin's cave of paintings,…
Berlin
Designed by Helmut Jahn, the visually dramatic Sony Center is fronted by a 26-floor, glass-and-steel tower and integrates rare relics from the prewar era…
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Berlin
This Nazi-era bunker presents one of Berlin's finest private contemporary art collections, amassed by advertising guru Christian Boros who acquired the…
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Berlin
Fossils and minerals don’t quicken your pulse? Well, how about Tristan, the T-Rex? His skeleton is among the best-preserved in the world and, along with…
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Potsdam
This glorious park and palace ensemble is what happens when a king has good taste, plenty of cash and access to the finest architects and artists of the…
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Around Berlin
The 16th-century Spandau Citadel, on a little island in the Havel River, is considered one of the world’s best-preserved Renaissance fortresses. With its…
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Kreuzberg
The airfield of Tempelhof Airport, which so gloriously handled the Berlin airlift of 1948–49, has been repurposed as one of the largest urban parks in the…
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Spreewald
In the protected village of Lehde, this cluster of historical Sorb farm buildings gives you a good sense of what rural life in the Spreewald was like a…
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Berlin
The Hackesche Höfe is the largest and most famous of the courtyard ensembles peppered throughout the Scheunenviertel. Built in 1907, the eight interlinked…
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Potsdam
The original Barberini Palace was a baroque Roman palazzo commissioned by Frederick the Great and bombed to bits in World War II. Since January 2017, a…
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Prenzlauer Berg
It was the most advanced planetarium in East Germany at its opening in 1987 and after the recent renovation it has upped the scientific, technology and…
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Potsdam
The 18th-century fad for the Far East is strongly reflected in the adorable Chinese House. The cloverleaf-shaped pavilion is among the park's most…
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Potsdam
Frederick the Great's famous summer palace, this rococo gem was designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff in 1747 and sits daintily above vine-draped…
Schloss Charlottenburg - Belvedere
City West & Charlottenburg
The late-rococo Belvedere palace, with its distinctive cupola, makes an elegant setting for the world's largest collection of porcelain masterpieces by…
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Spreewald
This little private museum reveals the secrets behind the famous Spreewald pickles and lets you sample different varieties. It also crowns the…
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche
City West & Charlottenburg
Allied bombing in 1943 left only the husk of the west tower of this once magnificent neo-Romanesque church standing. Now an antiwar memorial, it stands…
City West & Charlottenburg
A former Prussian officers' casino now showcases the artistic legacy of Helmut Newton (1920–2004), the Berlin-born enfant terrible of fashion and…
Friedrichshain
It’s easy to feel like Gulliver in the Land of Brobdingnag when walking down monumental Karl-Marx-Allee, one of Berlin's most impressive GDR-era relics…
Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst
Berlin
On 8 May 1945, the madness of six years of WWII in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht (armed forces of Nazi Germany) in this…
Berlin
Plötzensee was one of Berlin’s most notorious prisons during the Third Reich. Some 3000 people were executed here, most of them members of the Nazi…
Prenzlauer Berg
With its wimpy trees and anaemic lawn, Mauerpark is hardly your typical leafy oasis, especially given that it was forged from a section of Cold War–era…
Berlin
Standing a bit lost and forlorn within the Kulturforum, the Stüler-designed Matthäuskirche (1846) is a beautiful neo-Romanesque confection with…
City West & Charlottenburg
Classic modern art is the ammo of this delightful museum where Picasso is especially well represented, with paintings, drawings and sculptures from all…
Around Berlin
In January 1942 a group of 15 high-ranking Nazi officials met in a stately villa near Lake Wannsee to hammer out details of the ‘Final Solution’, the…
City West & Charlottenburg
The 103m-high Europa-Center shopping mall was Berlin’s first 'skyscraper' at its 1965 opening, the giant Mercedes star spinning on its rooftop a symbol of…
Berlin
The filigree Funkturm, next to the trade fairgrounds, soars 129m high (14m with antenna) and looks especially pretty when illuminated at night. From the…
City West & Charlottenburg
This smart gallery is a treasure trove for aficionados of surrealism, a fantastical art form that peaked in the 1920s. It introduces works by the main…
Berlin
Georg Kolbe (1877–1947) was one of Germany's most influential early 20th-century sculptors and a member of the Berlin Secession. He distanced himself from…
Berlin
For a striking perspective of Berlin’s Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium), take the lift up to the outdoor observation platform of this 77m-high bell tower,…
