Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

The synagogue in the backyard of an apartment house is one of the biggest in Germany.

With an impressive, circus-tent-like roof over its courtyard and remains of the pre-war Hotel Esplanade incorporated into the modern structure.

Places with markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays are popular with locals at Winterfeldplatz. Buy a coffee and browse amongst the stalls; this is a place to unearth hidden gems. Breakfast is served usually until 14:00-15:00.

From 1941, 12,000 tons of concrete in a 15-m-high and 20-m-diameter cylinder were built to test the load-bearing capacity of the Berlin soils (turns out glacial sands are no good basis for gargantuan architecture) for Albert Speer's Germania buildings. Too massive for later blasting, this is one of the more bizarre remains of the Third Reich.

An eerie memorial to victims of the Nazi regime built on the place of a former execution room, where nearly 2900 people where put to death between 1933 and 1945.

The complex consists of eight interconnected courtyards. Plenty of designer boutiques can be found here.

Germany's national centre for contemporary non-European art. The house is a leading centre for the contemporary arts and a venue for projects breaking through artistic boundaries. This architectural landmark was an American contribution to the international building exhibition INTERBAU 1957 as an embodiment of the free exchange of ideas. Colloquially called Schwangere Auster (Pregnant Oyster).

The only surviving Berlin city gate and a potent symbol of the city. This is the point where Straße des 17. Juni becomes Unter den Linden. The gate was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1791 and was intended to resemble the Acropolis in Athens. The Brandenburg Gate now symbolizes reunification, after dividing East and West Berlin for decades. This is the site of Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall" speech.

The town hall of Berlin is known as such because it is made of red brick, not due to its former political persuasion. There are nice Prussian rooms inside, which are worth a look.

Again one of the world's most comprehensive ones. At the museum district of Dahlem.

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.

The memorial site stretches along the full 1.5-km length of Bernauer Straße. The listing marker points to the visitor centre. Various monuments can be found along the entire length of the street, documenting nearby escape attempts and tunnels; captions are in German and English. The documentation centre across the street on Bernauer Straße/Ackerstraße is excellent (although most of the documentation is in German). The viewing platform next to the documentation centre gives you a tiny hint of the true scale of the Wall and how terrifying the "no man's land" between the two sections of walls must have been. The monument (that you can see from the platform) is a complete section of 4th generation wall - both inside and outside sections, and you can peer through from the east side to see the remains of the electric fence and anti-tank devices in the death strip. It really helps you understand what an incredible feat it was to get from one side to the other -- and why so many died doing it. The memorial site is often missed by tourists but an absolute must for anyone interested in this part of the city's history. It's a memorial to those who died crossing, so you won't, fortunately, get the tackiness of the Checkpoint Charlie area; instead you will be left with a haunting feeling of what life with the wall may have been really like.Bernauer Straße is a street with a great deal of Wall history: it came to tragic prominence on August 13, 1961 when East German authorities closed the border and the street (with houses in the East but the street in the West). Border guards walled the doors and windows shut to keep Easterners from escaping by jumping out the window while Westerners (including police and fire brigades who brought life nets to help catch refugees) looked on in horror. The first recorded Wall-related death - the notorious Peter Fechter case (he bled to death in the "no-man's-land" with both sides unwilling or unable to help him) - was here, as was one of the famous tunnels and the famous photograph of the GDR border guard leaping over the barbed wire.

Berlin's biggest lake and popular resort for bathing and watersports. You can also travel there by tram, which is an experience by itself.

Want to feel like one of the angels in Wim Wenders' classic film Der Himmel über Berlin (a.k.a. Wings of Desire)? Climb to the top of Gold-Else, as the statue of Victory on the top of the Victory Column is known. Just don't jump off if you're not actually an angel. Unfortunately there is no elevator, so be prepared for 285 steps to the platform at 50.7 m.Else was built to commemorate Prussian military prowess in the wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870-71), and moved to her present location by the Nazis. Five roads run into a traffic circle called Grosser Stern, in the centre of which is the Siegessäule. Else is visible from much of the city district known as Tiergarten. At the base of the statue are reliefs of war scenes representing the conflicts which this monument memorializes. The Allies forced Germany to take those panels down in 1945, but they were remounted in 1984 and 1987. It also served as a backdrop for a speech by then senator Obama in 2008, after his request to speak in front of Brandenburger Tor caused a political debate in Germany.