The Französischer Dom on Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt is home to the Huguenot Museum, a place that traces how French Protestants shaped the city after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Invited by Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, many Huguenots settled in Berlin, bringing skills and trades that were valuable to the kingdom. The museum has been located inside the cathedral since 1929. (Note: it was closed until 2019.)
A striking scene appears in room nine of the museum: an artwork shows Crown Princess Dorothea reacting with surprise—“But he’s a refugee!”—as Pierre Fromery presents a set of exquisite jewels. The moment challenges a common belief of the time that refugees arrived with nothing. Many Huguenots came with craft, capital, and networks, and their presence quickly influenced Berlin’s economy and culture.
The large French community left a mark on the local dialect, Berlinerisch. Everyday expressions absorbed French roots, sometimes in playful or unexpected ways. Kinkerlitzchen is traced to the French quincaillerie, meaning hardware or small wares. Muckefuck is often linked to mocca faux, or artificial coffee, though linguists do not universally agree on this origin. These words, and others like them, speak to centuries of contact between languages.
The Französischer Dom itself was designed to echo the Huguenots’ main church in Charenton, near Paris, which was destroyed in 1688. Its architecture stands as a reminder of loss and continuity: a familiar silhouette rebuilt in a new city, where the community formed institutions, worshiped, and preserved its history in the museum that the cathedral now contains.
Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Cathedral,_Berlin
A splendid 15th-century Gothic church with many fine accoutrements.
The oldest museum of its kind in Germany which, despite great losses during the World War II, still possesses one of the world's primary collections of European applied art. There are two sections to the collection: one located at the Kulturforum in Tiergarten, the other at Köpenick Palace.
Huge technical museum, on a former railroad depot, featuring from ancient water and wind mills to computer pioneer Konrad Zuse's inventions, a collection of old to new vehicles of all types -bicycles, boats, trains, etc - and the interactive Spectrum science center with various hands-on experiments. There's an actual C-17 "Candy Bomber" airplane hanging on its façade. The railroad and aeronautical sections are hard to beat.
150-200 m along the Wiener Straße (bypassing the fire house and the public swimming pool) from U-Bahn Görlitzer Bahnhof, the park is famous for the Turkish families barbecuing on summer weekends, failed contemporary art and relaxed atmosphere of students. It does have a reputation of being full of pickpockets and drug dealers though and the police makes regular visits to this place to check on the situation.
This imposing building houses the Federal German Parliament or "Bundestag" and was completed in 1894 to meet the need of the newly-unified German Empire of the Kaisers for a larger parliamentary building. The Reichstag was intended to resemble a Renaissance palace, and its architect, Paul Wallot, dedicated the building to the German people. The massive inscription in front still reads: "Dem Deutschen Volke" - 'For the German people'. The Nazi leader Adolf Hitler exploited the fire which gutted the Reichstag building in 1933 by blaming the Communists for the arson and for attempted revolution. There is good evidence to suggest, however, that his followers were actually responsible and that this was a manufactured crisis. The iconic photo symbolizing the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany shows a Soviet soldier planting the Soviet flag on top of the building and there are to this day graffiti left by Soviet soldiers on some walls of the Reichstag which were deliberately preserved by the new Germany as a memento of the war. It's perhaps the only national parliament to have traces left by a foreign army deliberately preserved. When German reunification became a reality, the new republic was proclaimed here at midnight on 2 October 1990. The Reichstag building is well-known in the art world thanks to Paris-based Bulgarian artist Christo's mammoth 'Wrapped Reichstag' project in 1995. The entire building was swathed in silver cloth for two weeks that summer.The Reichstag has undergone considerable restoration and alteration, including the addition of a spectacular glass dome designed by the British architect Norman Foster completed in 1999. You can visit the Reichstag building proper and even listen to a parliamentary debate but you need to book on their website sometimes weeks or even months in advance. Fortunately its much easier to visit the glass dome. You can reserve a visiting time and date on their website or in the small building across Scheidmannstrasse, except during the high season you should be able to arrange a time later the same day or the next day. Photo ID or passport is required to make the booking. A passsport is required during your visit. This is a very popular tourist attraction in Berlin and can get quite crowded however it is worth the effort. The helical path up the inside of the dome is a lot of fun and the 360 degree views at the top are splendid.
Experience the Stasi Secret Police Prison first-hand. Tours are compulsory. Some of the tours are done by former inmates.
The building of one of Berlin’s oldest breweries is a ravishingly beautiful and heritage-protected industrial monument.
The longest moving refracting telescope is 21 m long with a lens diameter of 68 cm. This giant telescope was built in 1896 by Dr. Freidrich Simon Archenhold but is now part of the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. It was the place where Albert Einstein presented his Theory of Relativity to the public in 1915.
The Bendlerblock building complex has long held ties to the German military, first serving as the offices of the Imperial German Navy and today housing the Berlin offices of the Ministry of Defense. It was here where, on 20 July 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and other officers led a coup that sought to remove Hitler and the Nazis from power. They failed and were summarily executed in the courtyard, where a memorial stands for these men who are considered German heroes by many. Inside the building you'll find the German Resistance Memorial Center, a permanent exhibit dedicated to the July 20 plot and other individuals in the German resistance.