Berlin (city-state)
Berlin is the least German-feeling city in Germany, and that's the reframe most first-timers need. Read more
The only place you can walk more than a kilometre of standing Wall — and the murals date precisely to the euphoric spring of 1990.
The Porcelain Cabinet alone justifies the trip — several thousand pieces of export porcelain floor to ceiling, in a room the size of a large bathroom.
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
Walk into the centre until you can't see the street. Then go underground and read the names. Nowhere else does a country mark its worst crime this plainly on its most valuable land.
The best-preserved industrial architecture in the district, free to walk through, with a genuinely good Sunday street food market in the courtyards.
Twenty-one thousand panes of Chartres blue glass, next to a tower Berlin deliberately never repaired. Free, and ten minutes from Bahnhof Zoo.
Reichstagskuppel
The best free view in Berlin, inside a building that deliberately puts the public above the parliament. Book it the day you book your flights.
More species than any zoo on earth, two minutes from an S-Bahn platform, with pandas fed on a published schedule.
Neues Museum
Nefertiti in a domed room with no phone screens between you and her — inside the most honest war-ruin restoration in Europe.
The core exhibition is free, the Libeskind building is one of the great pieces of European architecture, and Shalekhet is the single most affecting installation in Berlin.
The most serious and least kitschy account of GDR daily life in Berlin — federally curated, thoughtfully argued, and free.
The most important food building in Berlin — and Saturday morning beats the famous Thursday night if you want to eat rather than queue.
Cheap, loud, genuinely local, and the best food shopping in the district — go on a Friday and eat gözleme by the canal.
Berlin's most neighbourly flea market: private sellers, real GDR objects, and the best café-lined square in the east to collapse into afterwards.
A former death strip that Berlin turned into a scruffy Sunday carnival — flea market, karaoke amphitheatre, and a graffiti-covered original wall segment still standing.
The oldest and most storied currywurst in Berlin, still family-run, still costing pocket change under a railway viaduct.
The most interesting kitchen in the Kollwitzkiez, and the Thursday €28 feast menu is the cheapest way to eat a genuinely ambitious meal in Prenzlauer Berg.
Tim Raue eats here twenty times a year. Order the silk tofu and the herb chicken and you'll understand why.
The city's oldest beer garden, still shaded by the same chestnut trees, still charging beer-garden prices — the easiest good evening in Prenzlauer Berg.
The room, the sound system, and the fact that a thousand people are dancing without a single phone in the air.
