Berlin itinerary — 2 days

A documentation centre and memorial located on the site of the former Gestapo, SS, and Reich Security headquarters. The permanent exhibition uses photographs and archival documents to reveal the mechanisms of Nazi state terror. Outside, alongside a preserved 200-metre section of the Berlin Wall, an open-air trench reveals the excavated basement walls of the Gestapo prison where political prisoners were held and interrogated.

The dramatic symbol of reunified Berlin and one of post-Cold War Europe most ambitious urban redevelopment projects. Once pre-war Europe busiest traffic hub, the area became a desolate wasteland split by the Berlin Wall before being reborn in the 1990s as a high-tech district of glass skyscrapers, cinema complexes, and the luminous tent-like roof of the Sony Center.

Germany's central Holocaust memorial, dedicated in 2005 near the Brandenburg Gate. Architect Peter Eisenman designed an undulating 19,000-square-metre grid covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or stelae of varying heights. Walking deeper into the labyrinth of bare stone columns evokes a disorienting, somber sense of isolation. Below the field lies a free underground Information Centre documenting the personal stories of Holocaust victims.

Berlin's only surviving city gate, built in 1788–1791 by Carl Gotthard Langhans after the Athenian Propylaea. Schadow's quadriga was taken by Napoleon and returned in 1814; the Wall stood by the gate — today it is the symbol of a united Germany.

The central national memorial dedicated to the division of Germany along Bernauer Strasse. It preserves the only intact section of the Berlin Wall system in its full depth, featuring the border strip, patrol track, floodlights, and a surviving watchtower. The outdoor exhibition includes the Window of Remembrance honoring victims who died attempting to escape, alongside the rebuilt Chapel of Reconciliation.

The monumental Protestant cathedral anchoring Museum Island, completed in 1905 to Julius Raschdorff's High Renaissance and Baroque Revival design. Inside, the massive Sauer organ with 7,269 pipes and the Hohenzollern family crypt containing 94 royal sarcophagi command attention. Climbing 270 stone steps leads to the exterior dome gallery for sweeping 360-degree views across central Berlin.

East Berlin's main square, named after Tsar Alexander I's visit. Around it: the 368-metre TV tower, the World Time Clock with its rings of time zones, and the GDR-era Fountain of Friendship between Peoples. The square defined the roaring twenties and, again, post-reunification Berlin; Fassbinder made it his series' hero.

An open-air gallery on the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall — 1.3 km running along the Spree river. In the spring of 1990, 118 artists from 21 countries covered the concrete barrier with murals celebrating freedom and reunification. Famous works include Dmitri Vrubel's Fraternal Kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker, and Birgit Kinder's Trabant car bursting through the wall.