Kapelle der Versöhnung stands where a 19th-century church once rose above the neighborhood. The original Church of Reconciliation, completed in 1894, became trapped within the fortified border zone known as the “death strip” after Berlin was divided.
With the Berlin Wall cutting through streets and families, the church fell behind barbed wire and watchtowers. In 1985, long after regular services had ceased, authorities of the GDR demolished the building to remove what they viewed as an obstacle in the restricted zone. The site remained empty, heavy with memory.
Today, the Kapelle der Versöhnung offers a modest, light-filled space shaped by remembrance. Its walls and setting point back to a difficult past, and the chapel hosts occasional memorial services honoring those who died at the Wall. The calm atmosphere and simple design invite reflection on separation, loss, and the long path to reconciliation.
Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapel_of_Reconciliation
Also known as "Picasso und seine Zeit", this not so large, but precious museum hosts a very good collection of paintings and sculptures signed by Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Giacometti, and others from the first decades of the 20th century.
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.
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 museum’s treasures include the sculpture collection with works of art from the middle ages to the 18th century. The Bode museum is best known for its Byzantine art collection and the coin cabinet.
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.
150 m high lattice tower with open-air observation deck 124 m above ground.
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.
Gothic church, the second oldest (built in late 13th century) of the historical centre of Berlin. It's the highest church tower of Berlin (about 90 m), but seems rather small beneath the gigantic TV tower. The church tower was built in the late 18th century by Carl Gotthard Langhans, the architect of the Brandenburg Gate.
Spectacular building by Mies van der Rohe contains its own collection and temporary exhibitions.
House museum on Max Liebermann, German painter and printmaker. Has about 15 Lieberman paintings.
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.
Built by Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games, this is one of the better examples of Nazi neoclassical architecture (laying claim to the legacy of Rome, fasces and all) and is still used for sporting events. At those Olympics, African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals, a party-spoiler for Aryan superiority. It's the home of soccer team Hertha BSC - they were relegated in 2023 and now play in 2. Bundesliga the second tier. In 2024 this stadium hosted games in the UEFA Euro Finals, including the final itself. For a glimpse of the Olympiastadion in its original state, seek out Leni Riefenstahl's movie Olympia - clips are shown in the Kinemathek and elsewhere.
Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels made Bebelplatz (then called Opernplatz) infamous on 10 May 1933, when he used the square across from Humboldt University to burn 20,000 books by "immoral" authors of whom the Nazis did not approve. Their list included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky and Sigmund Freud. Today a monument is the reminder, though it blames Nazi students for the episode. When entering the square it's easy to miss the monument. It is in that part of Bebelplatz bounded on one side by the Opera House and on the other side by Humboldt University. Look dead centre: the monument is underground. A piece of plexiglass allows the viewer to look underground into a large, white room, filled with entirely empty, blank white bookcases. The room is large enough to hold the 20,000 books that were burnt. The absence of books reminds the viewer just what was lost here: ideas. But the event did reveal things to come, as ethnically Jewish author and philosopher Heinrich Heine, whose books were burned, let one of his characters say in an 1821 play: "This was only the foreplay. Where they burn books, they will also burn people." He was correct.