Berlin Sights and Landmarks Guide, Germany

With its amazing cityscape, that is a perfect blend of the contemporary and the historical, Berlin is well known as one of the most developed cities in Europe. This is perhaps partly because of the fact that the city had to go extensive reconstruction after the widespread damage caused to it during the Second World War. 

Each borough or district in Berlin has a pretty distinct character and ambience, and one can easily spend weeks exploring this fabulous city and everything that it has to offer. Many of the popular museums and art galleries are in the Mitte area, which also features several interesting bars and restaurants. Schöneberg is an old world hippie district which is also the center of the gay community in Berlin. It features a popular flea market on Saturdays, and also has many lovely street cafes where you can sit at your leisure and watch the city in all its colorful variety.

Zehlendorf is another fine district which is often overlooked by tourists since it’s known primarily for the university, but it also has many fine museums as well as buildings of historical interest. The main street for shopping and dining is Kurfürstendamm, where many unexpected small delights can be found in the by lanes and smaller alleys, so don’t forget to check those out. 

Easily the most visited landmark is the site of the infamous Berlin Wall. There are actually two primary sites where a stretch of the Wall has been preserved as a gallery, as well as a couple of smaller sites. One of the best is the East Side Gallery near the River Spree, since it has several interesting murals on it. Another memorial spot where a section of the Wall has been preserved is near the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum. The Berlin Wall Memorial at the S-Bahn Nordbahnhof is not as frequented by tourists as the others, but it is one of the most realistic as well as controversial remnants of the Cold War area, being a memorial to those who died trying to cross over from one side to the other. Unlike the other memorials, it has no murals and is stark, with a viewing platform that allows one to imagine the scope of what the city must have been like during the Cold War days. The recently inaugurated Holocaust memorial is a somber and rather overwhelming structure, with its huge abstract mural and underground museum, which are dedicated to the Jews murdered all over Europe during the Second World War.