The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is defined by the jagged, ruined spire of a nineteenth-century building that rises alongside a modern, octagonal church. Emperor Wilhelm the Second ordered the original structure built between eighteen…
Essential Berlin
This tour walks you through the landmarks that define Berlin, from imperial monuments and Cold War relics to towering modern structures.
Take this tour in street view →Listen in the Mira app
1. Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
2. Reichstag Building
The Reichstag Building is identifiable by the massive, modern glass dome sitting atop its nineteenth-century stone base. Completed in eighteen ninety-four, the structure was designed by Paul Wallot to house the parliament of the German…
3. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a vast, open field of two thousand seven hundred and eleven gray concrete slabs, or stelae, arranged in a grid across nearly five acres of undulating ground. These rectangular blocks vary in…
4. Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz is defined by its dramatic contrast of modern glass-and-steel towers against its history as a scarred, divided wasteland. It marks the site of the former Potsdam Gate, a customs point that transformed in the nineteenth…
5. Checkpoint Charlie
At the intersection of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße sits a small, white wooden guardhouse and a series of sandbags that mark the location of Checkpoint Charlie. During the Cold War, this was the most famous of the border crossings…
6. Museum Island
Museum Island is a cluster of five historic buildings situated on the northern end of Spree Island in the heart of Berlin. You can distinguish the site by the monumental, temple-like architecture of the buildings, which were constructed…
7. Berlin Cathedral
The Berlin Cathedral is defined by a massive central dome that rises ninety-eight meters above the city. Completed in nineteen oh five under Emperor Wilhelm the Second, this monumental church was designed by Julius Raschdorff in a…
8. Berlin TV Tower
The Berlin TV Tower, or Fernsehturm, rises three hundred sixty-eight meters above Alexanderplatz as a slender concrete shaft topped by a distinctive, oversized steel sphere. Completed in nineteen sixty-nine by the German Democratic…
9. East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery is a one-point-three kilometer stretch of the former Berlin Wall, easily identified by the murals that cover the once-gray concrete along Mühlenstraße. This section of the border wall, which formerly separated East…