Berlinische Galerie is a museum devoted to modern art, photography, and architecture, with a collection that centers on work created in Berlin. Housed in a former industrial building, the museum offers spacious galleries where paintings, installations, photographs, and design objects share a common stage. The focus on the city’s own creative output gives the collection a distinctive voice, tracing how artists have responded to Berlin’s rapid changes over the last century.
The collection spans movements that shaped the city’s cultural identity, from early modern experiments to postwar breakthroughs and contemporary practices. Expressionist canvases, Dada collages, and works from the New Objectivity movement reveal the restless spirit of the 1920s. Postwar pieces show a divided city’s tensions and hopes, while more recent works reflect reunification and the evolving urban landscape. This local lens connects artworks to specific neighborhoods, studios, and historic moments.
Photography holds a central place, charting Berlin’s streets, architecture, and people across decades. Documentary series, avant‑garde experiments, and portraiture capture the city’s shifting identity—from rubble and reconstruction to techno culture and creative studios. The museum’s photographic holdings highlight how cameras have recorded social change and forged new visual languages in Berlin.
Architecture displays explore bold ideas tested in the city’s fabric. Plans, models, and drawings introduce modernist housing concepts, postwar rebuilding, and contemporary redevelopment. Design objects and urban studies add context, showing how everyday life, public space, and technology interact in Berlin’s built environment.
Rotating exhibitions bring fresh takes on the collection and feature Berlin-based and international artists tied to the city. The building’s clean lines and high ceilings support large installations and multimedia works, while quieter rooms allow close viewing of drawings, prints, and photographs. Together, the displays create a dialogue between past and present, studio and street, intimate detail and sweeping cityscape.
Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinische_Galerie
Not far away from Schloss Tegel (at the "große Malche") you can take a look at the oldest tree in Berlin, an oak which has been growing there since about 1192 (so it's actually older than Berlin itself). The name ("fat Mary") allegedly stems from the brother Humboldt who named the tree after their overweight cook.
Exhibition of digital interactive entertainment culture. You can actually play almost all of the exhibits making it a more "hands on" museum than most.
The longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still in existence, painted by artists in 1991 and restored in 2009, after years of decay. At Mühlenstraße, next to the river Spree. The murals are painted on the east side of the wall after the fall of Communism; so they are not from the Cold War, during which murals could only be painted on the west side. Make sure not to miss the famous mural of a car seemingly crashing through the wall with Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing above it. It is actually on the back side of the gallery (it is facing away from the street.) It is just inside the entrance of the Eastern Comfort Hostel, near the east end of the gallery.
An observation tower without an elevator in Southeast Berlin, from which you can see that there is a great deal of forest around Berlin. There is a cafe at the tower.
The Bierpinsel ("beer brush") is a building in Steglitz which resembles an observation tower and is famous for its pop-art appearance. The futuristic, landmarked building was built from 1972 to 1976 and has since been used as restaurant, night club, bar, radio station and art café.
This heritage-protected public bathing beach which opened in 1907 is one of the largest inland lidos in Europe and has a 1275-m-long sand beach, a capacity for up to 30,000 guests and a popular nudist area.
Designed by Hans Poelzig in 1929, it is the first self-contained broadcasting house in the world and it is still in use today.
This museum describes the procedures applied by the East German secret police. Every Friday to Monday, there is a guided tour in English at 15:00 (5€).
This castle is one of Berlin's oldest castles and where Prince Carl used to reside. Be sure to check out Glienicke Bridge, the bridge that became renowned for the exchange of Western and Eastern secret agents. You can also visit Glienicke Park.
The meeting point of one of the leading oppositions against the GDR regime and is a great Neogothic church. Also the only ecumenical Lord's supper with Protestants and Catholics together took place in the Gethsemanekirche (2003).
A domed church at Bebelplatz/Unter den Linden, the oldest (mid-18th century) and one of the biggest Catholic churches in Berlin. Interior was redesigned in a modern style in the 1950s, but there are still many treasure chambers in the basement.
Erected in 1818 to a classically-inspired design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a guardhouse for the imperial palace, since 1993 this compact building has housed a small, but extremely powerful war cenotaph, the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, continuing its use under East German rule as the primary "Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism". The interior of the Doric column-fronted building is intentionally empty, but for a small but moving sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz depicting a mother cradling a dead child. The statue is positioned beneath a round hole in the ceiling, exposing the figures to the rain and snow.
Features a nice fountain, stately old houses and a good night time hot spot. Many people hang out in the platz in good weather.
The building of one of Berlin’s oldest breweries is a ravishingly beautiful and heritage-protected industrial monument.
A man-made hill of about 120 m in the Grunewald, created after the Second World War from debris of the city. On top is the Field Station Berlin, a former US listening station. Inside the building complex you can see lots of graffiti art. The hill can be accessed without any restrictions and is free; however, the building complex is surrounded by fences and requires a ticket (tours are available as well).