Germany
Berlin
The city where the twentieth century actually happened, rebuilt as Europe's least polished and most interesting capital.
Germany's capital is a sprawling, low-rise, half-rebuilt city that wears its twentieth century in the open: the Brandenburg Gate at one end of Unter den Linden, and stretches of the Berlin Wall still standing where they cut the place in two. It is not a pretty capital and does not try to be. What it has instead is space, an enormous museum and gallery scene, cheap living by Western European standards, and a nightlife culture with no real equivalent anywhere. Berlin rewards wandering far more than ticking off sights.
Suggested stay
3–5 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Berlin
History outdoors the Wall, the Gate, the stelae field and the Gestapo cellars all stand in the street where they happened, open to walk up to and read.
Nightlife clubs in old power plants and swimming baths that open on Friday and close on Monday, with a door culture that is picky and a scene that is not a show.
Museums five on one island and a dozen more beyond it, running from Nefertiti and a Greek altar to Cold War archives and art in disused stations.
Space an enormous, low-rise city with a decommissioned airport for its biggest park, and lakes and pine forest inside the boundary.
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
Pleasant · 14-25° days
52.520° N, 13.405° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Berlin
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Weather & when to go to Berlin
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Conditions Jan-Feb Cold · Mar Mild spring · Apr Pleasant · May-Aug Warm · Sep Oktoberfest · Oct Cool autumn · Nov Cold & grey · Dec Cold, markets
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Berlin
There is no bad month, only a long grey one: from November through February the days are short, the sky stays flat white and the outdoor city shuts down. That is also when Berlin is most itself indoors, with quiet museums and full clubs. Spring and early summer, when the beer gardens and canal banks fill, are the easy answer.
Top things to do in Berlin
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Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag - the postcard and the parliament
history culture arts 👍 PopularThe gate stood in the death strip for twenty-eight years and is now simply a square people walk through. Ten minutes north, Norman Foster's glass dome spirals up over the Bundestag chamber, with a free ramp to the top and a view straight down onto the politicians. Registration ahead is required.
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Berlin Wall Memorial, Bernauer Strasse - the Wall as it actually was
history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe only place the whole apparatus is preserved: outer wall, raked sand, lamps, patrol road and a watchtower, on a street where people once jumped from apartment windows into the West. An outdoor documentation strip runs for well over a kilometre. Far more useful than Checkpoint Charlie, which is a photo op.
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East Side Gallery - painted Wall along the Spree
history culture arts 👍 PopularThe longest surviving stretch of the Wall, more than a kilometre of it, turned into a mural gallery in 1990 by artists from around the world. Dmitri Vrubel's socialist fraternal kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker is the one everybody photographs. Busy, exposed and best walked early.
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Museum Island - Nefertiti, the Ishtar Gate and four more collections
culture arts history 👍 PopularFive museums on one Spree island. The Neues holds the Nefertiti bust; the Pergamon holds the Ishtar Gate and Miletus market gate but has been closing in sections for a very long rebuild, so check what is open before you queue. The Alte Nationalgalerie and Bode fill the gaps.
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Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - Eisenman's field of stelae
historyTwo thousand seven hundred concrete slabs on undulating ground beside the Tiergarten, deliberately without explanation above ground. The floor sinks as you walk in until the city disappears. The information centre underneath names individual families and is the harder half of the visit.
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Topography of Terror - the Gestapo headquarters site
historyBuilt on the excavated cellars of the Gestapo and SS command, with a surviving run of Wall along the edge of the plot. The documentation is dense, unflinching and organised around the perpetrators rather than the victims. Free, and among the best history museums in the city.
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Tempelhofer Feld - the Nazi airport that became a public park
off beaten path scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedThe airfield of the Berlin Airlift, closed in 2008 and handed to the city, which voted against building on a square inch of it. People now cycle the runways, kite-buggy down them and barbecue on the apron, under the vast curved terminal building. Nothing else in Europe feels like it.
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Berghain and the techno scene - clubbing that runs into Monday
nightlife musicA former power plant with a door policy that turns away most of the queue, no photographs inside and sets that carry on for days. It is the apex of a much wider scene: Sisyphos, Tresor, Kater and the open-air spots along the Spree. Dress plainly, go late, go sober-ish.
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Jewish Museum - Libeskind's zinc zigzag
history culture artsThe building came first and does half the work: slashed windows, sloping floors, the Garden of Exile leaning underfoot and the cold concrete Holocaust Tower. Inside is two thousand years of German Jewish life rather than only its destruction.
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Kreuzberg and Neukoelln eating - doner, Turkish market and late kitchens
foodThe doner kebab as it is eaten now was invented by Turkish Berliners, and the city still does it best. The Maybachufer market twice a week is the anchor, with Vietnamese, Levantine and modern German kitchens filling the canal-side streets around it.
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Mauerpark flea market - Sunday junk and bearpit karaoke
shopping culture artsThe market sprawls across ground that was once the death strip, selling records, old cameras, GDR oddments and a great deal of nonsense. From early afternoon a stone amphitheatre fills for open-air karaoke in front of a few thousand strangers, which is a Berlin institution.
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Charlottenburg Palace and the western city - Prussian baroque and Ku'damm
history shoppingThe largest surviving Hohenzollern palace, with a rebuilt baroque wing, a rococo interior and a long formal garden onto the Spree. The old West Berlin around it is calmer and grander: Kurfuerstendamm shopping and the broken tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church left as a war ruin.
Best areas to stay in Berlin
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Mitte
First-time visitors $$$Central, rebuilt and sight-heavy
Explore hotels in Mitte →
Kreuzberg
Food and bars $$Turkish, punk, canal-side and loud
Explore hotels in Kreuzberg →
Prenzlauer Berg
Couples and families $$Restored tenements, leafy, family-heavy
Explore hotels in Prenzlauer Berg →
Friedrichshain
Night owls $Young, scruffy, club-adjacent East
Explore hotels in Friedrichshain →
Charlottenburg
Quiet and comfortable $$$Old West, grand and quiet
Explore hotels in Charlottenburg →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Berlin
Getting to & around Berlin
Getting there
Fly into BER, then about half an hour by regional train or S-Bahn into the centre.
Flight
Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER)
Roughly 24 km southeast of the city. The station sits directly beneath Terminal 1: the Airport Express regional train reaches Hauptbahnhof in about half an hour, and S-Bahn lines S9 and S45 run slower but more often. The airport is in fare zone C, so a city ticket alone does not cover it.
Train
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
ICE services from Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Cologne, plus direct international trains from Prague, Warsaw, Vienna and Amsterdam.
Coach
ZOB am Funkturm
Long-distance buses from across Germany and eastern Europe arrive at the central bus station in the west, on the U2.
Drive
The A10 ring road circles the city and feeds the autobahns; driving in is easy, parking and the low-emission zone less so.
Getting around
U-Bahn
Nine lines, frequent, and the backbone of getting about. Runs all night on Fridays and Saturdays.
TBC
S-Bahn
Faster suburban rail on longer hops, including the elevated east-west line and the ring around the inner city.
TBC
Tram
Extensive in the former East and almost absent in the West, a map quirk left over from the division.
TBC
Bus
Slower but useful crosstown; the 100 and 200 pass most of the central landmarks for the price of a normal ticket.
TBC
Cycling
Flat, wide and heavily lane-equipped, with rental and share bikes everywhere. Probably the best way to see the city.
TBC
Walking
Fine within a district, but Berlin is huge: crossing between neighbourhoods on foot eats an afternoon.
Free
Day trips from Berlin
Potsdam
Full dayPrussian palace town
Frederick the Great's Sanssouci sits above terraced vineyards at the head of an enormous royal park studded with further palaces. The town adds a Dutch quarter, a Russian colony and the Cecilienhof, where the Allies carved up postwar Germany. Bring a bike or accept a lot of walking.
Getting there
train
40 min on the S7 or a faster regional train
Sachsenhausen Memorial
Half dayConcentration camp memorial
The SS built Sachsenhausen as a model camp and ran the whole system from offices next door; the Soviets then used it as an internment camp. The triangular layout, roll-call ground and cell block survive. A sober, demanding few hours, free to enter, with audio guides available.
Getting there
train | bus | walk
45 min on the S1 to Oranienburg, then a bus or a 20 min walk
Spreewald
Full dayCanal and punt country
A biosphere reserve where the Spree splits into hundreds of channels through alder forest, worked by flat punts and postal boats. Villages are reached by water, the Sorbian minority still speaks its own language, and the pickled gherkins are a regional obsession. Paddle it yourself or take a punt.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr 15 by regional train to Luebbenau
Wannsee and Pfaueninsel
Half dayLake beaches and forest
Berlin's seaside: a broad lake with a long sand lido, ferries, forest paths and a folly-covered island where peacocks wander. The villa where the Final Solution was coordinated stands on the same shore and is now a memorial, which makes for a strange, worthwhile pairing.
Getting there
train | bus | ferry
30 min on the S1 or S7, then a short bus and ferry
Dresden
Full dayRebuilt baroque city
The Saxon capital flattened in 1945 and painstakingly put back together, with the Frauenkirche rebuilt from its own rubble and the Zwinger holding Old Masters and the Green Vault treasury. A long day from Berlin, but the Elbe terrace at dusk earns it.
Getting there
train
About 2 hr each way by regional or long-distance train
A little history of Berlin
Berlin began as two trading settlements, Berlin and Coelln, on either side of a Spree crossing in the sand and marsh of Brandenburg. It grew as the seat of the Hohenzollerns, became the Prussian capital, and in 1871 the capital of a newly unified Germany. Industry and the 1920s briefly made it the largest and most experimental city in Europe.
Then it broke. The Nazi state was run from here, and the Red Army fought street by street to take it in 1945; the ruins were carved into four occupation sectors, and in 1961 the East walled its half in. For twenty-eight years Berlin was two cities with a death strip between them. Since 1989 it has been rebuilding, and the seams still show everywhere, which is a large part of why people come.
Coelln is first recorded, the date the city counts as its founding.
Berlin becomes capital of the new Kingdom of Prussia.
Capital of the unified German Empire under Bismarck.
Greater Berlin absorbs its suburbs, becoming one of the world's largest cities.
The Nazis take power and run the state from the government quarter.
The Battle of Berlin ends the war in Europe; the city is split into four sectors.
The GDR seals the border overnight and builds the Berlin Wall.
The Wall opens on 9 November after a botched press conference.
Parliament and government return from Bonn to the rebuilt Reichstag.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+49
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A Germany eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Berlin
▸ When is the best time to visit Berlin?
April to October, when the parks, canal banks and beer gardens are the point of the city and the days run long. May, June and September are the sweet spot. Winter is short-dayed and grey outdoors, but the museums are quiet and the clubs are at their best.
▸ How many days do you need in Berlin?
Three days covers the Wall sites, the government quarter, Museum Island and one night out. Five lets you add Potsdam or Sachsenhausen, a second museum day and an afternoon doing nothing at Tempelhof, which is closer to how the city is meant to be used.
▸ Is Berlin walkable?
Within a district, yes. Between them, no. The city is enormous and flat, so plan on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn for anything crosstown, or hire a bike, which is how a lot of Berliners cover the same distances.
▸ Is Berlin worth visiting in winter?
Yes, if you are honest about what you want. It is cold, grey and dark by mid-afternoon, and the outdoor city goes quiet. In exchange the museums are empty, the bars are warm, the club scene runs at full strength and the whole place is much cheaper.
▸ Do I need cash in Berlin?
More than you would expect in a Western capital. Plenty of bars, Spaetis, market stalls and older restaurants are cash only, and some take German bank cards but not foreign credit cards. Carry notes and do not assume you can tap everywhere.
▸ Can you actually get into Berghain?
Sometimes. The door is famously selective and turns away large parts of the queue with no explanation, so treat it as a maybe rather than a plan. Dress plainly and dark, go in a small group or alone, go very late, and have a second club in mind.
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✓ best Apr, Jun-Oct