Berlin

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The glass dome of the Reichstag building lets visitors look down into the chamber of the German parliament, Berlin, Germany

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe covers a full city block near the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany

Berlin Cathedral stands on Museum Island beside the Lustgarten and the Spree River, Germany

The rebuilt Neues Museum on Museum Island houses Egyptian and prehistoric collections, Berlin, Germany

About Berlin

Berlin, Germany's capital and largest city, spreads across a flat landscape of rivers, lakes and parks in the country's northeast. Few cities carry as much twentieth-century history: it was the seat of the Prussian kings and the German Empire, the center of Nazi power, and then a city divided by a wall for nearly three decades until 1989. Reunification turned it into a creative, sprawling capital with distinct neighborhoods.

The Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz anchor the central district, a short walk from the Reichstag, whose glass dome is open to visitors who register in advance. Nearby, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe fills a city block with concrete slabs, and the Topography of Terror documents the Nazi security apparatus not far from the former Checkpoint Charlie. Museum Island gathers major collections beside Berlin Cathedral. The Cold War story continues at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse and along the painted stretch of the East Side Gallery, while the Fernsehturm towers over Alexanderplatz. To the west, Charlottenburg Palace and the leafy Tiergarten offer a calmer side.

Berlin suits travelers interested in history, art and nightlife. Distances are large, so the U-Bahn and S-Bahn are essential. Neighborhoods such as Mitte, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg each make good bases.

Best seasonMay to September for outdoor cafes and lakes; winter brings Christmas markets and fewer visitors.

Ideal stayFour days covers the main history sites, museums and a couple of neighborhoods.

ArrivingBerlin Brandenburg Airport connects to the center by train, and long-distance rail arrives at the Hauptbahnhof.

WiserMap travel guideBerlin Germany Brandenburg Gate to the East Side GalleryDiscover Berlin with this guide to the Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag dome, Museum Island, the Berlin Wall Memorial, East Side Gallery, neighborhoods and food.Read the guide

Top 12 Experiences in Berlin

Landmarks 4

Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz

Completed in 1791 to designs by Carl Gotthard Langhans, the sandstone gate is crowned by the Quadriga, a Victory chariot Napoleon...

Reichstag building and dome

Home of the Bundestag, the 1894 Reichstag was gutted by fire in 1933, battered in 1945 and wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in...

Fernsehturm and Alexanderplatz

At 368 metres, the television tower East Germany completed in 1969 is the tallest structure in Germany and the city's most recogni...

Kurfürstendamm and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

West Berlin's grand boulevard runs about three and a half kilometres through Charlottenburg, lined with flagship stores, cafés and...

History 4

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Just south of the Brandenburg Gate, Peter Eisenman's memorial opened in 2005 as Germany's central Holocaust memorial, a field of 2...

Topography of Terror and Checkpoint Charlie

On the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters, the Topography of Terror documentation centre explains how the Nazi regime...

Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse

On Bernauer Strasse, where the border ran along the house fronts and residents leapt from windows to reach the West, the central m...

East Side Gallery

The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, about 1.3 kilometres along the Spree in Friedrichshain, was painted by artists f...

Museums 1

Museum Island and Berlin Cathedral

Five world-class museums share this UNESCO-listed island in the Spree. The Neues Museum shows the bust of Nefertiti, while the Alt...

Palaces 1

Charlottenburg Palace

Berlin's largest surviving royal palace began in the 1690s as a summer home for Sophie Charlotte, the first Queen in Prussia, and...

Parks 2

Großer Tiergarten

Once a royal hunting ground, the Tiergarten is central Berlin's great green lung, about 210 hectares between the Brandenburg Gate...

Tempelhofer Feld

When Tempelhof Airport, famous for the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949, closed in 2008, Berliners later voted to keep its vast air...

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