Wannsee

at the Rüdesheimer Platz

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.

The cemetery is also known as also known as the Memorial to the Socialists. It has many interesting monuments and graves of known people.

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

The Bayerischer Platz is the centre of the Bayerisches Viertel ("Bavarian district", with many streets named after Bavarian cities), which was destroyed a lot more during World War II (about 60%). Somewhere around there Albert Einstein lived once. You’ll find several memorial signs providing information about the Nazi regime's persecution of gays and Jews.

The Schöneweide forced labor camp (GBI-Lager 75/76) on Britzer Straße is a complete ensemble, which makes it a rather unusual site in Berlin. Of the original thirteen housing barracks erected between 1943 and 1945, eleven are still standing today. Six barracks on the western part of the former camp grounds belong to the Documentation Center on Nazi Forced Labor.

The Kollwitzplatz, with a small nice park, is one of Berlin's most beautiful Gründerzeit city squares. Together with the Kollwitzstraße which is crossing it, it offers many cafés and restaurants, but is also a well-known symbol in Germany for gentrification since the late 1990s. Its flea market which takes place every Sunday in one of Berlin's best known and focuses on international delicatessen foods.

The largest aquarium in Germany with over 9000 animals that are presented on three storeys in a historic building. Aquarium Berlin is found on the premises of the Zoo, but can also be visited separately. One of the best places on a rainy day with children.

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.

Built 1859-1866 this is one of the most architecturally stunning synagogues in Germany to survive both the Nazi era and the war.

The district town hall was the main town hall for West Berlin during the Cold War. The freedom bell (a present from the American people) and several memorials from that time can be found here. On the main balcony in 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy made his famous statement, "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’". On 10 November 1989 Helmut Kohl (chancellor (Bundeskanzler) 1982-1998) and Willy Brandt (former Bundeskanzler and mayor of Berlin) cheering the crowd as they saw the end of the Berlin Wall the night before. The town hall is an emotional place for most people in Berlin (especially West Berlin).

It was the only border crossing between East and West Berlin that permitted foreigners passage. Residents of East and West Berlin were not allowed to use it. This contributed to Checkpoint Charlie's mythological status as a meeting place for spies and other shady individuals. Checkpoint Charlie gained its name from the phonetic alphabet; checkpoints "Alpha" and "Bravo" were at the autobahn checkpoints Helmstedt and Dreilinden respectively. Checkpoint Charlie's atmosphere was not improved at all on 27 Oct 1961 when the two Cold War superpowers chose to face each other down for a day. Soviet and American tanks stood approximately 200 m apart, making an already tense situation worse. Now the remains of the Berlin Wall have been moved to permit building, including construction of the American Business Center and other institutions.At the intersection of Zimmerstraße and Friedrichstraße (U-Bahn Kochstraße U6) is the famous "You Are Leaving the American Sector" sign. The actual guardhouse from Checkpoint Charlie is now housed at the Allied Museum on Clayallee. For a more interesting exhibit go to the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie. This is a private museum with kitschy memorabilia from the Wall and the devices GDR residents used to escape the East (including a tiny submarine!). There are also people who set up booths here offering to stamp your passport with souvenir stamps in exchange for a small fee. You are highly advised not to put these stamps in your passport, as these are not official stamps and could invalidate it. Instead, bring along an expired passport or a small booklet to put the stamps in.

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.

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

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.

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.

A small castle in late classical style. It was built 1868 by Martin Gropius (uncle of the Bauhaus-founder and other architects, the von Siemens family changed the castle a bit around 1900 and they enlarged the dimensions of the park, which is today renovated and nice to wander around when the sun is shining. Located within a few minutes' walking distance from Biesdorf station (take the S5 from the city centre) or Elsterwerdaer Platz station (U5).

At a former Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield, RAF Gatow. The museum's focus is on military history, particularly the history of the Luftwaffe of the Bundeswehr, with a collection of more than 200,000 items, including 155 aeroplanes, 5,000 uniforms and 30,000 books. There are also displays (including aeroplanes) on the history of the airfield when it was used by the RAF. Aircraft include reproductions of Otto Lilienthal's gliders, of World War I planes such as the Fokker E.III, and World War II planes such as the Bf 109 and Me-262, as well as at least one aircraft of every type ever to serve in the air forces of East and West Germany. Most of those postwar aircraft are stored outside on the tarmac and runways, however, and many are in bad condition. There are long term restoration projects, including a Focke-Wulf Fw 190. RAF Gatow is notable as the "missing third airport" of West Berlin. Each sector used to have its own airport; the French sector had Tegel, the American sector had Tempelhof and the British had Gatow. However, RAF Gatow never saw much traffic of any kind, was more kept as a political statement than for transportation value, and thus was shut down after reunification. Tempelhof, after having been shut down for civilian traffic from 1975 to 1981, closed for all flights in 2008, while Tegel shut down in November 2020.

The "mother of all airports", according to Sir Norman Foster, is a huge relic of the interwar era. The terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941 immediately south of the city centre, was the hot spot of the Berlin airlift (Berliner Luftbrücke) in 1948-49, but closed as an airport on October 30, 2008. In 1951 a monument was added to its entrance square - then renamed "Airlift Square" -to commemorate the airlifts over the Berlin Blockade. The airport was featured in movies like Billy Wilder's One Two Three. Nowadays, the airfield is a spacious park with many visitors in summer and fall. The terminal building is still fascinating - the halls and neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe, are still some of the largest structures in the world. The terminal building is used as a venue of fashion weeks or fairs. In the 21st century, the former airport was a hot-button political issue: First Tempelhof Airport was the subject of a failed ballot measure to keep it open as an airport. A few years later, a ballot measure to prevent new construction on its outskirts was successful, thus preserving the urban open space at the cost of an exacerbated housing shortage.