Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

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.

This museum is perhaps something you wouldn't expect in a major metropolis and truth be told it owes its existence in part to partition (when West Berlin schoolkids couldn't go to the surrounding Brandenburg countryside to experience rural life). Opened in 1975 it is an attempt to recreate as faithfully as feasible a medieval farming village from roughly the era of Berlin's founding (12th or 13th century). The village that existed at this place 800 years ago was not called "Düppel" back then as that name was only applied in the 1860s after the Prussian victory over Denmark at Dybbøl which was rendered into German as "Düppel" and applied to the area to honor a member of the Prussian royal family who owned land there.

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.

A remarkable medium-sized classical castle by the famous K.F. Schinkel built 1820 to 1824, also called "Humboldtschlösschen", because Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt (and their family) lived here once. Still privately owned.

In 1893 the authorities of Berlin issued the artistic entrance to the National Park Friedrichshain. The fountain of fairy tales was commissioned by the National Park and later designed by Ludwig Hoffmann.

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.

With the Kreuzberg, a hill in Kreuzberg 61, the Prussian National Monument by Schinkel and a waterfall. Superb panoramic views across south Berlin.

150 m high lattice tower with open-air observation deck 124 m above ground.

Berlin's oldest church (1230) is a 3-nave hall church. It is in the centre of an area destroyed by bombs in the war which was then turned into a faux "old town" by the East German authorities called Nikolaiviertel. The area is more a hodge-podge of relocated buildings than an authentic reproduction, and the newly-built 1988 apartments that attempt to "harmonize" with the older buildings are embarrassing. The church is one of the only structures that was renovated rather than rebuilt. It is best known for a sandstone sculpture called the Spandauer Madonna (1290), but there are other interesting pieces here. When the church was destroyed in 1938 and rebuilt in the 1970s, the communist officials intended to use it as a museum, which did not open until 1987. The museum includes sacred textiles and religious sculpture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The Nikolaikirche is the showplace of the Nikolaiviertel, which isn't saying much.

The old town of Köpenick is surrounded by water. Especially noteworthy are the Köpenick Palace which houses a museum of applied art and the Neogothic town hall.

The first (and one of the biggest) water tower of Berlin (built 1877).

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.

This chapel was built on the site of a church built in 1894 which sat on the "death strip" and was thus blown up by the GDR authorities in 1985. The chapel is the site of occasional memorial services for victims of the wall.

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

The last Mies van der Rohe building (a dwelling house) in Germany before his emigration to the U.S. (1938). Now there are small contemporary/modern art exhibitions.

The main floor houses the antiquities collection in an ongoing exhibit called "Neue Antike im Alten Museum" (New Antiquities in the Old Museum). Directly through the front door, entering from the Lustgarten (Pleasure Garden, now under reconstruction), there is a domed rotunda with red and white cameos, Greek-style, with statues of the gods. To reach the Hildesheim silver collection, go to the back of the rotunda, turn left, walk through the long gallery and turn left into a small room at the end.

The area to the north of Tiergarten, along the bow of the river Spree (Spreebogen), is home to the German federal institutions such as the parliament (Bundestag, in the historic Reichstag building) and the federal government, as well as the new central train station (Hauptbahnhof) across the river.