Must-see attractions in Berlin
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…
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…
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…
-
Berlin
This Nazi-era bunker presents one of Berlin's finest private contemporary art collections, amassed by advertising guru Christian Boros who acquired the…
-
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…
-
Berlin
The Hackesche Höfe is the largest and most famous of the courtyard ensembles peppered throughout the Scheunenviertel. Built in 1907, the eight interlinked…
-
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…
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…
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…
-
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…
Schloss Charlottenburg - Neuer Flügel
City West & Charlottenburg
The palace’s most beautiful rooms are the flamboyant private chambers of Frederick the Great, designed in 1746 by the period's star architect Georg…
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…
Berlin
With its mosaics, terracotta reliefs and airy atrium, this Italian Renaissance–style exhibit space named for its architect (Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius…
Berlin
Europe’s fastest lift, Panoramapunkt yo-yos up and down the red-brick postmodern Kollhoff Tower in 20 seconds. From the bilevel viewing platform at a…
Berlin
The gleaming gold dome of the Neue Synagoge is the most visible symbol of Berlin’s revitalised Jewish community. The 1866 original was Germany's largest…
City West & Charlottenburg
Founded in 2000, C/O Berlin is the capital's most respected private, nonprofit exhibition centre for international photography and is based at the iconic…
-
Kreuzberg
A roof-mounted ‘candy bomber’ (the plane used in the 1948 Berlin Airlift) is merely the overture to this enormous and hugely engaging shrine to technology…
-
Schloss Charlottenburg – Altes Schloss
City West & Charlottenburg
Fronted by Andreas Schlüter’s equestrian statue of the Great Elector (1699), the baroque living quarters of Friedrich I and Sophie-Charlotte are an…
-
König Galerie @ St Agnes Kirche
Kreuzberg
If art is your religion, a pilgrimage to this church-turned-gallery is a must. Tucked into a nondescript part of Kreuzberg, this decommissioned Catholic…
-
City West & Charlottenburg
The expansive park behind Schloss Charlottenburg is part formal French, part unruly English and all picturesque playground. Hidden among the shady paths,…
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…
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
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…
City West & Charlottenburg
This lovely museum trains the spotlight on applied arts from the late 19th century until the outbreak of WWII. Pride of place goes to the art nouveau…
Berlin
Germany's film history gets the star treatment at this engaging museum. Explore galleries dedicated to pioneers like Fritz Lang, ground-breaking movies…
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…
Berlin
This prized collection of European design, fashion and decorative arts from the Middle Ages to today is part of the Kulturforum museum cluster. You can…
Schloss Charlottenburg - Neuer Pavillon
City West & Charlottenburg
Returning from a trip to Italy, Friedrich Wilhelm III (r 1797–1848) commissioned Karl Friedrich Schinkel to design this petite summer refuge modelled on a…
Schloss Charlottenburg - Mausoleum
City West & Charlottenburg
In the palace garden, west of the carp pond, the temple-like Mausoleum (1810) was conceived as the final resting place of Queen Luise, and twice expanded…
City West & Charlottenburg
Three floors of exotic fish, amphibians and reptiles await at this endearingly old-fashioned aquarium with its darkened halls and glowing tanks. Some of…
