Berlin: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
For twenty-eight years a wall ran through here, a hundred and fifty-five kilometres of it, with a death strip tens of metres wide behind it — watchtowers, raked sand. It fell in one night, on 9 November 1989, because of a journalist’s question and an official’s confused answer. This walk follows the line itself. Two and a half hours.
Live camera
All cameras in town (4) ▾
A short history of Berlin
Berlin is first mentioned in 1237, as two trading towns on the River Spree. It grew as the capital of Prussia, and in 1871 it became the capital of the unified German Empire. In January 1942 senior Nazis met at a villa in Wannsee, on the edge of the city, to coordinate the "Final Solution". In 1945 the city was captured and divided. On 13 August 1961 construction of the Wall began; it divided the city for 28 years, until it was breached on 9 November 1989. Since reunification in 1990 Berlin has again been the capital of Germany, and in 2005 the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was opened near the Brandenburg Gate.
The ten best sights in Berlin
1Brandenburg GateIt stood in the death strip for twenty-eight years
2ReichstagFree, but you must register online days ahead
3Holocaust Memorial2,711 slabs, free, and the information centre is below
4Topography of TerrorFree, on the cellars of the Gestapo headquarters
5Berlin Wall MemorialThe only place the full death strip is preserved
6East Side Gallery1.3 km of wall, 101 paintings, and free
7Jewish MuseumLibeskind’s building is the exhibit. Allow three hours
8Pergamon MuseumClosed for rebuilding until 2027. Check what is open
9Neues MuseumNefertiti is here, and the building was left bombed
10Alte NationalgalerieGerman romantics, and Friedrich’s monk by the sea
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Berlin →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Berlin:
Free walking tours in Berlin
The Line Through the City
For twenty-eight years a wall ran through here, a hundred and fifty-five kilometres of it, with a death strip tens of metres wide behind it — watchtowers, raked sand. It fell in one night, on 9 November 1989, because of a journalist’s question and an official’s confused answer. This walk follows the line itself. Two and a half hours.
- Brandenburg Gate · From 1961 to 1989 it stood inside the death strip, reachable by nobody on either side. Napoleon took the bronze chariot on top to Paris in 1806; it came back in 1814, and the Prussians added an iron cross to make the point.
- Reichstag · When it was rebuilt, the Russian graffiti that Soviet soldiers scratched into the walls in 1945 was found under the plaster — and the architect kept it, washed and lit, in the corridors where the members of parliament walk.
- Holocaust Memorial · Two thousand seven hundred and eleven concrete slabs of different heights on uneven ground, with no names, no dates and no explanation above ground. The architect refused to say what it means. The ground dips, and in the middle you cannot see out.
- Topography of Terror · This was the address of the Gestapo and the SS. The buildings were cleared after the war and the site lay as waste ground for forty years, because nobody wanted to decide what to do with it. The cellars were found in 1987.
- Checkpoint Charlie · In October 1961 American and Soviet tanks stood muzzle to muzzle here for sixteen hours, a hundred metres apart. What you see now is a replica with actors; the real hut is in a museum, and the place is worth five minutes.
- Jewish Museum · Libeskind built it with three underground corridors that cross, no right angles, and voids cut from top to bottom that you can look into but not enter. It stood empty for two years and three hundred and fifty thousand people came to see the building before a single object was in it.
Museum Island and the East
Five museums on one island in the river, built between 1830 and 1930 to announce that Prussia was a cultural power. They were bombed, looted, divided between East and West, and are still being restored. Around them the East built its own city — an enormous square, a television tower and a boulevard of concrete. Two hours.
- Neues Museum · Bombed to a shell and left open to the sky for sixty years. David Chipperfield rebuilt it without hiding the damage: new brick stops where old brick survived, and the bullet holes and burnt beams are left showing. Nefertiti is upstairs.
- Alte Nationalgalerie · Built to look like a Greek temple on a plinth, with a staircase going nowhere useful. Inside hangs Caspar David Friedrich’s monk at the sea — a man, a strip of sand, and four-fifths of the canvas empty sky.
- Berlin Cathedral · The Hohenzollern family built it to outdo St Peter’s and ninety-four of them are buried in the crypt. The dome took a direct hit in 1944 and burned; the GDR considered demolishing it and ran out of reasons.
- Alexanderplatz · The East flattened the old square and built this one to be seen from a distance. The world clock in the middle shows the time in a hundred and forty-eight cities, and it has been the meeting point of East Berlin since 1969.
- TV Tower · Three hundred and sixty-eight metres, built by an atheist state — and when the sun hits the steel sphere it throws a cross onto it. West Berliners called it the Pope’s revenge, and the East never managed to make it stop.
- Karl-Marx-Allee · Ninety metres wide and two kilometres long, built in the 1950s as workers’ palaces with tiled facades and ceilings three metres high. The uprising of June 1953 started on this building site, when the men laying it were told to work more for the same pay.
The Side That Was Walled In
Kreuzberg was a dead-end corner of West Berlin, walled in on three sides, with cheap rent and no future. So Turkish workers came, and students dodging the draft, and squatters. Today it is one of the most interesting quarters in Europe — and across the bridge the East begins. Two and a half hours.
- Markthalle Neun · One of fourteen market halls built in the 1890s to get food off the streets, and the only one still working as one. It was nearly turned into a supermarket in 2009; the neighbourhood bought it instead and runs it.
- Kreuzberg · West Berlin men were exempt from conscription, so the draft dodgers of the whole country moved here — into a quarter that was three-quarters surrounded by the Wall and that nobody else wanted. That is where the squats, the punk and the rent came from.
- Maybachufer Turkish market · Germany invited Turkish workers in 1961 on the understanding that they would go home, and never built anything on the assumption they would stay. Three million did. This market, twice a week along the canal, is what that looks like sixty years on.
- Oberbaum Bridge · A double-decker brick bridge from 1896 that became a border crossing for pedestrians only — West Berliners with a day pass walked over it into the East. The middle span was blown up in 1945 and rebuilt in steel in 1994, deliberately not matching.
- East Side Gallery · One thousand three hundred metres of the Wall, painted in 1990 by a hundred and eighteen artists from twenty-one countries, on the eastern side — the side that was never painted, because until then nobody could get near it.
- Friedrichshain · The clubs are here because the East left behind power stations, heating plants and railway yards with thick walls, no neighbours and no licence to lose. Berghain is a disused power station, and the queue is famously arbitrary.
Getting to Berlin and getting around
- Brandenburg Airport · Nine years late, €4 billion over. The train is 30 minutes
- Hauptbahnhof · Trains cross it on two levels at right angles
- Ostbahnhof · The East’s main station, and the East Side Gallery beside it
- ZOB · Cheap buses to Prague, Warsaw and Amsterdam
Cheap eats in Berlin
Eight counters where Berlin eats standing. A sausage invented in a bombed-out city in 1949 by a woman who traded spirits for ketchup with British soldiers, a kebab queue that has not been shorter than forty minutes in fifteen years, and a stand that has sold the same thing on the same corner since 1930.
- Konnopke’s Imbiss · €3.50, standing, closed Sundays
- Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebap · €6, and go at eleven in the morning
- Curry 36 · Open till five in the morning, €2.90, and no seats
- Burgermeister · In a converted public toilet under the railway. €6
- Rogacki · Closed Sunday and Monday. Herring under €6
- Markthalle Neun · Thursday is street food night, from five until ten
- Zeit für Brot · Cinnamon buns baked all day. Go for a warm one
- Prater Garten · Berlin’s oldest beer garden, 1837, and you carry your own
Museums in Berlin
- Neues Museum · €14, book a slot, and she is on the second floor
- Jewish Museum · Free. Three hours, and the building is the exhibit
- Gemäldegalerie · €10. Vermeer, Rembrandt, and nobody in the room
- Neue Nationalgalerie · €14, and the empty hall is the point
- Stasi Museum · €10. Mielke’s office, untouched, with his safe open
- DDR Museum · €13.50, hands-on, and you can sit in a Trabant
- Museum für Naturkunde · €11. The tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world
Parks and gardens in Berlin
- Tempelhofer Feld · Free, open till dusk, and you may cycle the runway
- Tiergarten · Free. The nude sunbathing lawn is not a rumour
- Treptower Park · Seven thousand Soviet soldiers are buried under it
- Mauerpark · Sunday afternoon: open-air karaoke for two thousand people
- Wannsee · A lido from 1907, a kilometre of sand, and €6
- Grunewald · Three thousand hectares of forest inside the city
Things to do in Berlin with kids
- Museum für Naturkunde · A 13-metre Brachiosaurus, and it is the real bones
- German Museum of Technology · A real aircraft hanging off the roof, and forty locomotives
- Zoologischer Garten · The most species of any zoo on earth, and pandas
- DDR Museum · You may open every drawer, and children do
- Tempelhofer Feld · Two kilometres of runway to run on, and free
- Olympiastadion · The 1936 stadium, and the bell tower you can climb
Nightlife in Berlin
- Berghain · Saturday midnight to Monday morning. No photographs
- Watergate · A glass wall onto the river, and the sun comes up in it
- SO36 · Punk since 1978, named after the postcode, and cheap
- Clärchens Ballhaus · A dance hall from 1913 that never closed, not once
- RAW Gelände · A railway repair yard of bars, clubs and climbing walls
- Berlin Philharmonie · Free lunchtime concerts every Tuesday at one
Frequently asked questions about Berlin
What is there to see in Berlin?
The top sights in Berlin are Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag and Holocaust Memorial. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Berlin?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Berlin without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Berlin?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Berlin, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Line Through the City.
How do you get to Berlin and get around?
The main ways are Brandenburg Airport, Hauptbahnhof and Ostbahnhof. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Berlin, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Berlin that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Berlin for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.