Brandenburg Gate – Where Unter den Linden intersects with Ebertstraße stands what may be Germany’s most recognisable sight. For first-timers in Berlin the Brandenburg Gate is obligatory, and it’s charged with real emotion and meaning, as an ever-present landmark during the destruction of the Second World War and the Berlin Wall when it stood at the divide. This ceremonial monument was erected at the turn of the 1790s at the behest of the Prussian King Frederick William II, on the site of one of Berlin’s former defensive gates. At the top is the Quadriga, a chariot pulled by four horses, all supported by 12 Doric columns forming five passageways.
German Bundestag (Reichstag Building) – Book a free ticket. Another landmark that sums up the drama of the 20th century in Berlin is the Reichstag, the meeting place of the German Parliament. This Neo-Baroque building dates from 1894 and housed the Imperial Diet until it was damaged in that infamous and historic fire in 1933. The ruins were merely maintained until after the Berlin Wall fell. And as soon as it came down a restoration project by Norman Foster began to resurrect the Reichstag as an emblem of a unified Germany. The plan included a new glass dome in which you can look down on the debating chamber and take in Berlin’s cityscape, all while hooked up to an audio-guide.
Tiergarten – After scurrying around the big-hitting sights and museums the Tiergarten could be a peaceful interlude. It’s a large belt of thick foliage, coursed by the Landwehr Canal and spreading west from the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag. Like so many European city parks the Tiergarten was once a hunting ground (for the Electors of Brandenburg) before being revamped in the 1830s by the Prussian architect Peter Joseph Lenné. Schloss Bellevue, the residence for the President of Germany, is in the Tiergarten. Beyond providing some respite from the city the Tiergarten is woven with monuments like the Bismarck memorial, and pretty spots like the Luiseninsel and rose garden.
Victory Column (Siegessäule) – Where the roads converge in the Tiergarten there’s another big photo opportunity. The Victory Column was built in 1864 after the defeat of Denmark in the Danish-Prussian War. But it would also come to represent a slew of other victories in that era, over Austria and then France in 1870-71. Following these successes an 8.3-metre sculpture of Victoria was added to the top of the column, weighing 35 tons. The whole monument once stood in front of the Reichstag, but was moved in 1938-39 to its current spot at the centre of a roundabout as part of Hitler’s ambitious plan to remodel Berlin as “World Capital Germania”. For a small fee you can tridge the 285 steps of the spiral stairway to watch over the Tiergarten and Berlin 51 metres above the park.
Museum Island – A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Museum Island on the Spree is an ensemble of five world-beating museums. These are the Altes Museum, Alte National Galerie, Neues Museum, Bode-Museum and the Pergamon Museum. This little district, and the wider notion of a museum as a venue for public edification, is a product of the Enlightenment and plans were set in motion in the early 19th century. The museums were also an opportunity to show off the richness and sophistication of the Prussian royal collections and the fruits of its 19th-century victories. The first institution to open was the Altes Museum in 1830, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel who drew up several Neoclassical monuments around Berlin in that period. The last was the Pergamon Forum from 1930, while the Neues Museum from 1859 was reopened in 2009 having been wrecked in the war.
Neues Museum – Created in 1855, destroyed in 1945 and now reborn, the Neues Museum had been left to rot for the entire post-War period. Finally, after reunification plans were put in place its treasury of ancient artefacts was finally moved from the Altes Musuem back to its rightful home in 2009. There are galleries for Ancient Rome and Greece, but it’s the Egyptian displays that pull in the crowds and none more so than the bust of Queen Nefertiti. The 3,350-year-old sculpture was discovered at Amarna in 1912 and has been beguiling people ever since. Still, Nefertiti is only one of many exhibits, from hieroglyphics to sarcophagi and two preserved ancient courtyards, one Egyptian and one Greek.
Gemäldegalerie – Paintings by Europe’s greatest artists up to the 18th century are in store at the Gemäldegalerie, one of the world’s top fine art museums. For the sake of introduction, we’re talking about Botticelli, Albrecht Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Hans Holbein, Raphael, Vermeer, Botticelli and many more than we can list here. This wealth of painting wasn’t amassed by a single family, but was curated by the Prussian Government from 1815 as a cross-section of European art. You have 1,250 works of the highest quality to see, by master after master, so don’t be surprised if you lose all track of time under their spell.
Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer – Some of the most memorable images from the early days of the Berlin Wall were recorded at Bernauer Straße where there’s now a memorial to this famous boundary. A 70-metre length of the wall has been preserved here, including the Todesstreifen (Death Strip) in between, and a watchtower beside the street. This whole section is closed off as a permanent memorial to those who lost their lives trying to cross between 1961 and 1989. Across Bernauer Straße is the visitor centre, which chronicles the wall, from when it was first enforced to its eventual destruction. There’s also a five-storey observation tower giving you a true sense of the divide.
Pergamon Museum – At the Pergamon Museum you’ll come face-to-face with epic ancient monuments from the Near East, brought in pieces to Berlin from the 1910s and reconstructed in these galleries. The 2nd-Century Pergamon Altar is the piece that gives the museum its name, a stairway and portico on a pedestal adorned with a frieze in high relief portraying scenes from Greek mythology. Some other wonders are the colourful Ishtar Gate, rebuilt with the material discovered in its excavation, the Roman Market Gate of Miletus, the Islamic art of the Umayyad Mshatta Facade from Jordan and, oldest of all, the Mesopotamian Meissner fragment from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Deutsches Historisches Museum – In the Zeughaus, one of the many palatial buildings on Unter den Linden, the German Historical Museum reveals 2,000 years of German history. For this there’s an enormous exhibition of 7,000 artefacts arranged in chronological order. These jump from precious pieces, like the iconic painting of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the elder or Napoleon’s hat worn at the Battle of Waterloo, to things that give you a hint of everyday life. So you can also cast your eye over Weimar election posters, penny farthing bikes from the 19th century, intact American supply drops from the Berlin Blockade and home appliances from the GDR.
Unter den Linden – Berlin’s oldest and most stately boulevard runs east to west from the Musuem Island to the Brandenburg Gate. The route is as old as Berlin, and the lime trees that give Unter den Linden its name were planted in 1647. But it was only in the 18th century, during the reign of Frederick the Great that the boulevard took on its current grandeur. The big sights like the Zeughaus, State Opera and Humboldt University all arrived in this period. The list of alumni at the university includes Einstein, Marx, Engels and Hegel. Many of the historic landmarks on Unter den Linden were levelled or badly damaged in the war and would take until after Reunification to be rebuilt or restored.
Fernsehturm – Raised next to Alexanderplatz in the late-1960s, the Fernsehturm (Television Tower) was intended as a highly visible symbol of communist power in East Berlin. Still the second tallest structure in all of the European Union, it is as much landmark for Berlin as the Reichstag or the Brandenburg Gate. The Fernsehturm is also the highest building in Europe open to the public, and provided you plan ahead, the 40-second ride to the viewing platform 200 metres high is something you can’t turn down. From this height you can zoom in on the minutest details with a telescope, and there’s also a revolving restaurant, which requires a bit of pre-planning if you want a table.
Alexanderplatz – The largest square in Germany and an energetic transport hub, Alexanderplatz is one of the most dynamic and exciting corners of Berlin. This former parade ground became the city’s main shopping district at the start of the 20th century. It was completely obliterated in the Second World War and owes its appearance to a GDR project during the 1960s. In those days “Alex” was the scene of many public gatherings, including the peaceful protests against the wall in 1989. The rate of transformation since the wall came down has been dramatic, and following developments like the Alexa mall, Alexanderplatz is a major shopping and entertainment destination once again. A lot of the GDR’s concrete architecture remains, most famously in the unforgettable silhouette of the Fernsehturm.
Checkpoint Charlie – The intersection of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße is the site of the legendary border crossing between East and West Berlin. This very place was almost the scene of a catastrophe in 1961 when American and Soviet Tanks stood off against each other for six days at the end of October. Later, in 1962, it witnessed the death of Peter Fechter, a teenager shot trying to cross from East to West. The name comes from the phonetic alphabet (Charlie meaning C), as Checkpoint Charlie was the third such border crossing set up by the allies in the city.
Olympic Stadium – Few sporting arenas have seen as much world-changing history as Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. When the Nazis came to power in 1933 they identified the upcoming 1936 Olympics as a propaganda opportunity, and Werner March was called upon to design a monumental stadium that would turn heads. The result was a technical masterpiece and would be the arena where Jesse Owens took four gold medals, undermining any notions of Aryan supremacy. Since then an immense steel roof has been installed, weighing 3,500 tons and the capacity has been cut back from 100,000 to 74,475. Visit for a tour during the week, or try to catch the famous atmosphere of a Bundesliga match when Hertha BSC play their home matches in the ground between August and May.
Berlin Philharmonie – is often voted in the top two or three symphony orchestras in the world. So for classical music fans a night at the Philharmoniker’s home venue might represent a lifetime ambition. The concert hall, noted for its tent-like roof, opened on the south side of the Tiergarten in 1963. In those days it was in a wasteland created by the wall, but is now at the green soul of the city and a member of the Kulturforum ensemble of important cultural venues. An odd piece of trivia is that guns were used to test the acoustics during construction in the early 60s. You might have your eye on an upcoming performance, but if you’d just like a taster there’s a free concert of chamber music every Tuesday at 13:00 in the foyer.
Deutsches Technikmuseum – A technophile’s idea of heaven, the German Technology Museum is a trip through transport and industry down the years. Kids will be wild about the fleet of heavy-duty vehicles like steam and diesel locomotives and a gigantic aviation hall holding a V-1 bomb, an Arado Ar 96, the wreckage of a Stuka divebomber and Lancaster, a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor. As for industrial processes, the museum doesn’t just tell you how things are made; it shows you with live demonstrations of paper production and typecasting for newspapers for instance. Kids can also get involved at the Science Centre, where wacky experiments will deepen their understanding of concepts like electricity, light and magnetism.
Kaufhaus des Westens – Shortened to KaDeWe, Kaufhaus des Westens is a department store without rival. This eight-storey monster is the most famous shopping destination in Germany and the second largest department store in Europe. If you’ve got money to burn the first three floors are all about high-end women’s and men’s fashion, and if you think you’ve seen it all before, the dazzling “Luxury Boulevard” on the ground floor is like a mini 5th Avenue. But for the rest of us the show-stopper is the immense “Delicatessen” food hall on the 6th floor where scores of confectioners and bakers work their magic, and almost any specialty food under the sun is available.
Museum für Naturkunde – You can say hello to the world’s largest mounted dinosaur skeleton at the central hall of Berlin’s natural history museum. Standing at 13.27 metres this beast, a sauropod, would have weighed 55 tons when it was alive. Nearly all the material is from one animal, discovered in Tanzania in the early 20th century. Tristan the T-Rex, and the groundbreaking archaeopteryx fossil (the missing link between reptiles and birds), are the other main events. But there’s a lot more keep you rapt in the museum’s galleries: Take the 4,500 mineral specimens in the Hall of Minerals, a taxidermy of a dodo, and an exhibition illustrating the theory of evolution with perfect clarity.
Potsdamer Platz – On the southeast corner of Tiergarten, Potsdamer Platz was an empty no-man’s-land divided by the wall from the end of the war to the 1990s. That was all a far cry from the Golden Twenties when the square had been the bustling centre of the city, an equivalent to Times Square for its transport connections, shopping, entertainment and nightlife. After the wall came down developers were presented with a blank canvas to re-imagine a unified Berlin as a modern, forward-thinking capital. Only a quarter of a century later Potsdamer Platz is a futuristic business district in the mould of La Défense or Canary Wharf.
Sony Center – Maybe the showpiece for the new Potsdamer Platz is this building complex that went up during the 1990, designed by Helmut Jahn and Peter Walker. The centre is a kind of plaza, encircled by arresting glass towers and sheltered by a tent-like canopy, which creates a real sense of spectacle. Around it are shops, hotels, museums, cinemas, an IMAX theatre, restaurants and offices. There’s free Wi-Fi on the plaza and sure to appeal to kids is the branch of the Legoland Discovery Centre, an indoor theme park based on the much-loved building toy.
East Side Gallery – Warschauer Straße station is the spot to start a walk beside the longest preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall. Every patch has been adorned with art, turning this into the world’s longest outdoor gallery. Some of the murals have gone down in history and are indelible, while others are constantly being replaced and updated. Most of the work is bold, colourful and thought-provoking.
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