Mitte

Landmarks

landmarks
Brandenburg Gate
Am Pariser Platz

The only surviving Berlin city gate and a potent symbol of the city. This is the point where Straße des 17. Juni becomes Unter den Linden. The gate was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1791 and was intended to resemble the Acropolis in Athens. The Brandenburg Gate now symbolizes reunification, after dividing East and West Berlin for decades)

landmarks
 

The Reichstag (http://www.bundestag.de/)— This imposing building houses the Federal German Parliament or "Bundestag" and was originally completed in 1894 to meet the need of the newly-unified German Empire of the Kaisers' for a larger parliamentary building. The Reichstag was intended to resemble a Renaissance palace, and its architect, Paul Wallot, dedicated the building to the German people. The massive inscription in front still reads: "Dem Deutschen Volke" - 'For the German people'. The Nazi leader Adolf Hitler exploited the fire which gutted the Reichstag building in 1933 by blaming the Communists for the arson and for attempted revolution. There is good evidence to suggest, however, that his followers were actually responsible and that this was a manufactured crisis. When German reunification became a reality, the new republic was proclaimed here at midnight on the 2nd October 1990. The Reichstag has undergone considerable restoration and alteration, not least the addition of a spectacular glass dome designed by the British architect Norman Foster. The Reichstag building is well-known in the art world thanks to Paris-based Bulgarian artist Christo's mammoth 'Wrapped Reichstag' project in 1995. The entire building was swathed in silver cloth for two weeks that summer. You can visit the dome for free but you will need to register online in advance in order to do so.

landmarks
Berlin from below
Brunnenstraße 105
Several daily tours 10AM-4PM in different languages
at Gesundbrunnen station

Go on guided tours below Berlin to the WWII bunkers, flak towers, cold war defence shelters, etc.

landmarks
Berliner Dom
Am Lustgarten
+49 (0/20) 2026 91 36
€7
M-Sa 9AM-8PM, Sunday and holidays noon-8PM
Bus: 100, 200, U-Bahn: U2, U5, or U8 to Alexanderplatz. S-Bahn: S5, S7, or S75 to Hackescher Markt

The city's Protestant cathedral and the burial place of the Prussian kings. You can climb to the top and get a view of the city.

landmarks
Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe
Ebertstraße 20
+49 (0/20) 26 39 43 36

A vast Holocaust memorial designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman and built close to the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz, only a few hundred metres from the site of Hitler's bunker. The memorial is a very controversial one with several painful scandals coming to light over the project's life. Some criticize the memorial for only being dedicated to murdered Jews and not to other victims of Nazi genocide. It was later discovered that a company producing an anti-graffiti chemical which was used to protect the memorial owned a company that produced Zyklon-B, which was used in concentration and death camps to kill prisoners. After much criticism, it was decided to continue working with the company, much to the dismay of the Jewish community. Furthermore, Joesph Goebbels', the Nazi propaganda minister, wartime bunker is located under a part of the memorial.

landmarks
Neue Synagoge
Oranienburger Straße 28/30
+49 (0/30) 8802 83 00
landmarks
The Bebelplatz (formerly Opernplatz)
Opernplatz

Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels made Bebelplatz then called Opernplatz infamous on 10th May 1933, when he used the square across from Humboldt University to burn 20,000 books by "immoral" authors of whom the Nazis did not approve. Their list included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Arnold Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky and Sigmund Freud. Today a monument is the reminder, though it blames Nazi students for the episode. When entering the square it's easy to miss the monument. Look dead centre: the monument is underground. A piece of plexiglass allows the viewer to look underground into a large, white room, filled with entirely empty, blank white bookcases. The absence of books reminds the viewer just what was lost here: ideas. But the event did reveal things to come, as author and philosopher Heinrich Heine, whose books were burned, said in 1821: "This was only the foreplay. Where they burn books, they will also burn people". He was correct.

landmarks
Russische Botschaft
Unter den Linden 55/65

A vast wedding cake of a building, built between 1949-1951 in the best Stalinist style and meant to symbolize the dominance of the Soviet Union in East German affairs before 1989.

Museums and galleries

museums and galleries
Pergamon Museum
Am Kupfergraben 5
Museumsinsel

There are three huge collections housed within this grand building: the Collection of Classical Antiquities, the Museum of Near Eastern Antiquities and the Museum of Islamic Art. The Pergamon Museum was the last museum built on Museumsinsel Museum Island and was intended to house the great acquisitions brought to Germany by archaeologists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The museum's best-known attraction is the Pergamonsaal. The Pergamon Altar 165 BC, from the eponymous Asia Minor city-state, is three stories high and served as the entrance gate to an entire complex. It is astounding both because of its size and extremely precise detail, especially in a frieze which shows the gods battling giants. The entire room is the same color as the building's stone, making the details on the frieze section stand out even more. Facing the stairs, on the left hand side of the room there is a small-scale model of the altar which allows the viewer to see where the frieze segments would have originally been mounted. A 1:300 scale model of Pergamon city is on the right side of the room. The monumental market door of Milet has just been restored and until 2012-09-30 there is a 360° artistic panorama of the old pergamon presented putting the exhibition into context.

museums and galleries
 

Museumsinsel Museum Island

Based on plans of the famous architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1822 and starting with construction from 1830 onwards, the island in the river Spree was developed as a Museum island by the Prussian emperors. There are five museums today on that island that mainly focus on archaeology and art of the 19th century. After the reunification, all museums were restored or are being restored still and brought back to life. The Museumsinsel Museum Island has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. – Area ticket Museum Island: 14,- €, red. 7,- €, young people up to the age of 18 free.

private art galleries

As Berlin is a city of art, it is quite easy to find an art gallery on your way. They provide a nice opportunity to have a look at modern artists' work in a not so crowded environment for free. Some gallery streets in Mitte with more than about a dozen galleries are Auguststraße, Linienstraße, Torstraße, Brunnenstraße all north of S-Bahn station Oranienburger Straße and Zimmerstraße U-Bahn station Kochstraße. A directory listing of all Mitte's art galleries can be found on The Art of Berlin: Complete Berlin Art Gallery Directory (http://www.theartofberlin...)

Art Center Berlin Friedrichstraße
Friedrichstraße 134, Tel. +49 30 27879020 (http://www.art-center-ber...). Four floors of exhibitions with a relatively good variety of genres and artists. A very nice oasis of calm from the busy Friedrichstraße.
Galerie Eigen & Art
Auguststraße 26, Tel. +49 30 280 6605, (http://http://www.eigen-a...). One of the most famous German art galleries, home to the Neue Leipziger Schule Neo Rauch et al.