5 Days in Berlin

Start in the old West, at the broken spire Berliners call der hohle Zahn, "the hollow tooth". The church was finished in 1895 and named for Wilhelm I, the first German emperor. A bombing raid wrecked it on the night of 22 November 1943, and after the war West Berliners kept the stump of the tower as a reminder instead of tearing it down. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is the best single symbol of the divided city's western half.

Next to the ruin stand the new church and bell tower, built in 1959-63 to a design by Egon Eiermann. Step inside: the walls are thousands of small blue glass panes, and the light is deep blue. On the steps outside, a gold-colored crack in the sidewalk remembers the 12 people killed in the attack on the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz in December 2016.

Walk east into the Tiergarten, Berlin's central park, a former royal hunting ground that was almost bare after the war, when freezing Berliners cut down most of the trees for firewood. About 15 minutes in, on a small lake, is the Café am Neuen See, a beer garden with a restaurant attached.

Order a Bratwurst with mustard, a soft Brezel (pretzel) and a half liter of Berlin pilsner, and sit at a long bench. It's not the best meal of the week, but you're here for the setting. In good weather you can rent a rowboat on the lake.

Ten more minutes east, at the Great Star roundabout, stands the Victory Column, 67 m tall and topped by the golden goddess Victoria, whom Berliners call Goldelse, "Golden Lizzy". It was built in the 1860s and 1870s to celebrate Prussian victories over Denmark, Austria and France, and it originally stood in front of the Reichstag. In 1938-39 the Nazis moved it here as part of their plan for a grand east-west axis. Climb the 285 steps to the platform for a view over the park, the Brandenburg Gate and the TV Tower.

Walk east through the park along Straße des 17. Juni and you reach Berlin's most famous monument. The Brandenburg Gate was built in 1788-91 for the Prussian king Frederick William II and is one of the first Greek Revival buildings in Germany. The chariot on top, the Quadriga by Johann Gottfried Schadow, was taken to Paris by Napoleon after he marched through the gate in 1806 and came home in 1814.

For 28 years the gate stood just behind the Wall, in the border strip, where neither East nor West Berliners could reach it. The crossing next to it reopened on 22 December 1989, six weeks after the Wall fell. That's why it's treated as a symbol of unity today.

Two minutes south of the gate is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman and opened in 2005. Around 2,700 gray concrete slabs of different heights stand on sloping ground, and as you walk in, the street noise falls away and the ground drops. Eisenman gave it no inscription and no single meaning, and visitors read it differently.

Under the field is the information center, free to enter, which tells the story of the Holocaust through the fates of individual people and families. Allow an hour.

End the day on top of the German parliament. The Reichstag was built in 1884-94 for the Empire's parliament. A fire in February 1933 gave the new Nazi government its excuse to suspend civil liberties, the building was wrecked in 1945, and after reunification the British architect Norman Foster rebuilt it for the Bundestag. The glass dome he added, opened in 1999, is the point: a spiral ramp winds up around a mirrored cone, so you look down into the debating chamber and out over the city.

Request a slot for about an hour before sunset on the Bundestag's website. Slots can only be requested for the current and the following month, so do it as soon as your dates are open. Without a booking, the service center on Platz der Republik sometimes has free places up to two hours before the visit. Dinner is up to you tonight: the Hauptbahnhof is a 15-minute walk away, or follow the Spree.

The boulevard Unter den Linden, "under the linden trees", is where Prussian kings showed off. Walk east from the Brandenburg Gate and stop first at Unter den Linden 42, Café Einstein, a Viennese-style coffeehouse. The ritual is Kaffee und Kuchen, coffee and cake; order the apple strudel or whatever is on the counter.

Then continue to Bebelplatz, the square Frederick the Great laid out in the 1740s, with the State Opera, St. Hedwig's Cathedral and Humboldt University around it. Look down in the middle: behind a glass plate in the cobbles is a room of empty white bookshelves, Micha Ullman's memorial to the Nazi book burning of 10 May 1933, when students and professors burned thousands of books by Jewish, left-wing and other banned authors. A plaque quotes the poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote in 1821 that where they burn books, they will in the end burn people too. The neoclassical guardhouse nearby, the Neue Wache, holds the national memorial to the victims of war and tyranny.

A few streets south is Gendarmenmarkt, often called Berlin's most beautiful square. Two almost identical churches, the French Church and the German Church, face each other across Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Konzerthaus (1821). The French one was built by Huguenots, Protestant refugees from France whom Prussia welcomed. Treat it as a pass-through on the way to the island: take a look, take a photo, and keep going. It's also the site of one of the city's best-known Christmas markets, from late November.

Walk east to the Spree and onto Museum Island, five major museums on one island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999. If you only have time for one, make it the Neues Museum, a war ruin that David Chipperfield rebuilt and reopened in 2009, deliberately leaving the bullet marks and the gaps visible. Its Egyptian collection holds the 14th-century BC bust of Queen Nefertiti, found at Amarna in 1912. Egypt has asked for her return for years, and Berlin has said no.

The Pergamon Museum, with its Greek altar and the Ishtar Gate, has been closed since October 2023. The north wing with the altar is due to reopen on 4 June 2027, and the south wing with the Ishtar Gate much later, so for now you can visit only the Pergamon panorama exhibition across the canal. The Alte Nationalgalerie, with 19th-century painting, is the easy second choice.

Across the street, the big sandstone building with Baroque facades looks 300 years old and is from 2020. The Hohenzollern kings and emperors lived in the Berlin Palace, which was damaged in 1945 and demolished by the East German government in 1950. In its place the GDR built the Palace of the Republic (1976), its parliament, with restaurants, a bowling alley and a disco. It closed after reunification because of asbestos and was torn down in 2006-08. The rebuilt palace holds the Humboldt Forum, a museum of non-European art and culture that has been argued about from the first plan, over the palace itself and over colonial-era collections. Its Forum Café is a handy lunch stop.

Next door, the Berlin Cathedral was built in 1894-1905 for Emperor Wilhelm II and is the largest Protestant church in Germany. Climb the 267 steps to the dome walkway for a view of the palace and Museum Island.

Walk east into the Nikolaiviertel, where Berlin began as the medieval twin towns of Berlin and Cölln. The St. Nicholas' Church, from around 1230, is the city's oldest church. The quarter was flattened in World War II, and the GDR rebuilt it for the city's 750th anniversary in 1987 as a mix of replica houses and prefab blocks. It's pretty, a little stage-set, and good for a walk after dark.

Then eat where Berliners go for the old dishes. Zur letzten Instanz on Waisenstraße calls itself Berlin's oldest restaurant. The house has served drinks since 1621, though the name only dates from 1924 and the building was rebuilt after the war. Order Königsberger Klopse, veal meatballs in a white caper sauce and a Berlin classic that's on the menu. It's not a light dinner.

Finish with the Fernsehturm, the TV tower, built by the GDR in 1965-69 as a symbol of socialist modernity. It's 368 m tall, the tallest structure in Germany, with a viewing platform at 203 m. Berliners joke that the sun's reflection on the sphere makes a cross, which they call Rache des Papstes, "the Pope's revenge", a bitter joke for an officially atheist state. Go up after dark, when the city is a grid of lights.

Alexanderplatz, the big GDR-era square at its foot and a major transport hub, is noisy and not much to look at. Ten minutes west are Hackescher Markt and the Hackesche Höfe, eight linked courtyards from 1906 with Art Nouveau tilework. You can walk through at night, but most shops are closed, so come back by day if you have an hour.

Almost nothing is left of the Berlin Wall in the center, and this is the one place where you can see how it worked. It went up on 13 August 1961 to stop East Germans from leaving; between 1949 and 1961 around 2.7 million people had left East Germany, most of them through West Berlin. On Bernauer Straße the houses belonged to the East and the sidewalk in front of them to the West, so residents jumped from their windows until the buildings were bricked up. Researchers have documented at least 140 people who died at the Wall in and around Berlin.

The memorial keeps a 60 m piece of the border as it was in 1989: two walls and the death strip between them, with a guard tower. Climb the observation platform of the documentation center across the street for the view, and see the Chapel of Reconciliation, built where the authorities blew up a church in 1985 because it stood in the border strip.

The Wall did not come down by plan. On 9 November 1989, the East German spokesman Günter Schabowski mixed up a press-conference note and said new travel rules took effect immediately. Crowds went to the crossings, and at Bornholmer Straße, about 2 km north-east of here, the guards gave up and opened the gate that night.

Ten minutes north-east is Mauerpark, "Wall Park", on what used to be the death strip and an old railway yard. Part of the Wall still stands here, covered in graffiti you're allowed to add to. On Sundays there's a big flea market (10am to 6pm) and, in good weather from roughly April to October, an open-air karaoke in the Bearpit amphitheater. On a weekday it's a quiet park.

Walk ten minutes to the elevated U2 tracks at Eberswalder Straße, where Konnopke's Imbiss has sold sausages under the railway viaduct since 1930, and currywurst since 1960. This is Currywurst, Berlin's own fast food: a sliced pork sausage under hot curry-ketchup sauce, with a roll or fries. Herta Heuwer is said to have invented it in 1949 at a snack stand in West Berlin, mixing ketchup and curry powder she got from British soldiers, and it fed the workers rebuilding the ruined city.

Konnopke's serves it ohne Darm (without casing, as in the GDR); other stands also offer mit Darm, which is snappier. Eat it at the standing counter with a wooden fork. Berliners argue about which stand is best, and Konnopke's is the most famous.

A short walk south is Kollwitzplatz, the heart of Prenzlauer Berg, and this stop is a story more than a sight. The district was a drab, rundown East Berlin tenement area until 1990, then a squatter scene, and within a generation one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, full of strollers, cafés and renovated 19th-century apartment blocks. Many of the newcomers came from Swabia in the southwest, the home of Spätzle, soft egg noodles served with cheese or gravy.

In January 2013, the long-time resident and former Bundestag president Wolfgang Thierse complained in a newspaper interview about Swabians who asked the baker for Wecken instead of the Berlin word Schrippen for bread rolls. A national argument followed, and self-styled Swabian separatists answered by smearing Spätzle on the Käthe Kollwitz monument in the middle of the square. It's a silly story, but it says a lot about how Berlin feels about its newcomers.

Take the U-Bahn to Warschauer Straße or Ostbahnhof and walk the East Side Gallery, the longest surviving stretch of the Wall, 1.3 km along the Spree. In spring 1990, right after the Wall opened, 118 artists from 21 countries painted its eastern face. It's the most colorful and most photographed piece of the Wall, and a tourist magnet, but the paintings are worth the walk, including the famous Brezhnev and Honecker kiss. Many were repainted in 2009 after weather and vandalism, and parts have been cut away over the years for apartment buildings and access roads.

The gallery ends at the Oberbaum Bridge, a double-deck brick bridge with a yellow U1 train rattling across the upper level. It links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, two districts the Wall split apart. About 700 m further down the river, the Molecule Man, a tall aluminum sculpture of three figures, stands in the water.

Berlin's club scene is the reason many people come, and techno culture was added to Germany's national list of intangible cultural heritage in 2024. The big names, Berghain and others, are in and around Friedrichshain. Berghain has a famously strict door and a ban on photos; the queue can take hours on a Saturday night and there's no guarantee you'll get in. Go as a small group, don't wear a costume, and bring cash.

If that's not your thing, there's plenty more. The RAW compound on Revaler Straße is a former railway works turned into bars, a beer garden and climbing walls, and Simon-Dach-Straße is lined with cheap bars. Or do it the Berlin way: buy a beer at a Späti (corner shop) and drink it on the street, which is legal.

Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, built Sanssouci in 1745-47 as a summer retreat where he could escape the court. The name is French for "without worries". It's one story high, with just ten main rooms, and sits on top of a terraced vineyard. The interiors are in the Rococo style, and the best way to approach is to walk up the six terraces from the fountain.

Frederick is buried at the top of the terraces, in a plain tomb he had chosen himself. His body was only moved here in August 1991, 205 years after his death. People leave potatoes on the slab, because he pushed potato farming in Prussia, which earned him the nickname Kartoffelkönig, the Potato King. In the park, don't miss the Chinese House, a gilded tea pavilion with life-size golden figures.

From the park, walk down the pedestrian street Brandenburger Straße, which begins at Potsdam's own small Brandenburg Gate, to the Dutch Quarter. King Frederick William I, Frederick the Great's father, wanted Dutch craftsmen to settle in his growing garrison town, and in 1734-42 he had 134 red-brick houses with gabled roofs built for them in the style of the Netherlands. They're now full of small shops, cafés and galleries.

Pick any café that looks busy with locals for soup, a sandwich or Kaffee und Kuchen. The quarter feels lived in, it's busy at weekends, and its small streets can be seen in an hour.

Walk about half an hour north (roughly 2 km) to the Neuer Garten, a park on the shore of the Jungfernsee, and follow the paths to Cecilienhof. It's a Tudor-style manor with half-timbered walls and 55 decorative chimneys, built in 1914-17 for the last Prussian crown prince, the last palace the Hohenzollerns built. It looks like an English country house, which was the point.

In July and August 1945, the winning Allies held the Potsdam Conference here. Stalin, Truman and Churchill, replaced halfway by Attlee after the British election, decided how defeated Germany would be run. They confirmed the four occupation zones and put the land east of the Oder and Neisse rivers under Polish administration. Within a few years the zones hardened into two states, and in 1961 into a wall.

Walk the lakeshore (about 40 minutes) or take tram 93 from the Hauptbahnhof to the Glienicke Bridge, the steel bridge over the Havel that once split Berlin from East Germany. It was a border crossing closed to ordinary people, and the Americans and Soviets used it to swap captured spies. The first swap was on 10 February 1962, when the U-2 pilot Gary Powers was exchanged for the Soviet agent Rudolf Abel. There were two more big ones, in 1985 and in 1986, when the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky crossed to the West.

Stand in the middle of the bridge; the old border ran right along it. Then take bus 316 to Wannsee station for the S1 or S7 back to the center, about 35-45 minutes.

The Topography of Terror stands on the site of the buildings where the Gestapo, the SS leadership and the Reich Security Main Office ran the Nazi terror. Bombs destroyed them in 1945, and the ruins were cleared after the war. The cellar was rediscovered in the 1980s and turned into an open-air exhibition, with a documentation center added in 2010.

The exhibition follows how the regime built its police state, step by step. It is free, factual and unsparing. Outside, the longest surviving stretch of the outer Wall runs along Niederkirchnerstraße (the East Side Gallery was the inner wall, not seen from the West). Ten minutes west is Potsdamer Platz, a glass-and-steel district of the 1990s built on the empty ground of the former border strip. It has no old buildings to see; walk through it only if you want to see the new Berlin.

Five minutes' walk east is Checkpoint Charlie, the Allied name for the main crossing between East and West Berlin on Friedrichstraße. It was the only crossing for foreigners and Allied soldiers. In October 1961 American and Soviet tanks stood facing each other here, and in June 1963 John F. Kennedy came to look over the Wall. Peter Fechter, an 18-year-old who tried to cross nearby in August 1962, was shot and left to bleed for about an hour; a memorial stands on Zimmerstraße.

It's also, honestly, a letdown. The guardhouse you see is a replica (the original is in the Allied Museum in Dahlem), actors in uniform pose for tips, and the souvenir stalls are tacky. Look at the open-air panels, take your photo and move on.

Walk about ten minutes south-east of Checkpoint Charlie to the Jewish Museum Berlin, opened in 2001 and one of the largest Jewish museums in Europe. The zinc-clad zigzag building by Daniel Libeskind is as much the exhibit as what's inside: tilted floors, bare concrete towers and a void that runs right through it, meant to make you feel what's missing. The core exhibition covers German-Jewish history from the Middle Ages to today, which is more than the Holocaust, and it's free.

Don't skip the Garden of Exile, a tilted grid of concrete columns with trees growing out of the tops, and the Fallen Leaves installation of 10,000 metal faces on the floor.

It's a 15-minute walk south-west to Mehringdamm for a late lunch. The modern döner kebab sandwich, meat shaved from a vertical spit and stuffed into bread with salad and sauces, was developed in West Berlin in the early 1970s by Turkish immigrants, and Kadir Nurman is the name most often credited. Berlin's association of Turkish döner makers recognized the city as its birthplace in 2011.

Mustafa's Gemüse Kebap at Mehringdamm 33 is the famous one: chicken döner with roasted vegetables, feta and lemon, and a queue that can last half an hour or more. Whether it's the best in Berlin is a fight you can have with any local. For something faster, any busy shop where locals line up will do, or cross the street to Curry 36 for a currywurst.

Head up the hill at Viktoriapark, one of the few real hills in central Berlin. At the top is a cast-iron monument from 1815-21, designed by Schinkel for the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, and its cross is where Kreuzberg ("Cross Hill") gets its name. The view to the Fernsehturm and the Mitte skyline is worth the climb, and there's a small vineyard on the slope. From spring to about mid-October an artificial waterfall runs down the hill.

From Viktoriapark it's a 10-15 minute walk south-east to Platz der Luftbrücke, where you can walk into the Tempelhofer Feld, a former airport that is now a park of more than 300 hectares. Tempelhof flew its last flight on 30 October 2008. Its huge terminal, rebuilt by the Nazis in the 1930s, still stands at one end, and the runways are now used by skaters, kite flyers and joggers. Voters rejected plans to build on it in a 2014 referendum.

It was also the center of the Berlin Airlift. When the Soviets blocked all road and rail access to West Berlin in 1948-49, the Western Allies flew in food and coal for nearly a year, and at the peak a plane landed every 30 seconds. The memorial at Platz der Luftbrücke shows the three air corridors. Walk out onto the runway for the sunset.

For the last night, eat in the oldest kind of Berlin pub. The Wirtshaus Max und Moritz on Oranienstraße has been here since 1902, with its original tiles and carved wood. The menu is German tavern food: Eisbein, Wiener Schnitzel (a veal cutlet), Käsespätzle, goulash and Sauerbraten (a vinegar-marinated pot roast with red cabbage and dumplings). Ask for the house Kreuzberger Molle, an unfiltered beer brewed for the pub, and let the evening go as slowly as the waiter.

Afterwards you can walk down Oranienstraße and pick any of the bars. A good last drink is a Berliner Weisse mit Schuss, the sour wheat beer with raspberry or woodruff syrup.