What did neighbours, police officers, workers and escapees do in the face of the state?
9 walks with different starting points and stories. Compare their maps, stops and duration, then choose where to begin.
Explore these walks
Berlin's political history also unfolds at the scale of a life. Residents, workers, police officers and fugitives appear in this theme through their responses to power. The walks bring different actions into their settings, without turning every experience into an identical example or removing the circumstances in which it took place.
In “Alexanderplatz and the TV Tower”: You start in front of Marx and Engels, who no longer face the way people say they do, and a Red Town Hall that isn't red because it's communist, and whose chronicle in stone was rebuilt from photographs lent by ordinary Berliners.
In “The Wall on Bernauer Straße”: The street where the Wall ran past people's front doors: neighbours jumping into firemen's safety sheets, a 145-metre tunnel, a bullet whose owner was changed by propaganda, a church blown up, and a 19-year-old policeman who leapt the barbed wire.
In “Museum Island, the Palace”: Opposite stands the palace of the kings: blown up by the GDR, replaced by the Palast der Republik and later rebuilt, with a balcony that survived because a republic was proclaimed from it.
Choose from 9 independent walks in Berlin. Open the one that interests you to see its map, stops and approximate duration before deciding. You don't need to do them all or follow this selection's order; each walk has its own starting and finishing points.
Open a marker to see its page. Use two fingers to move the map on mobile.
You start in front of Marx and Engels, who no longer face the way people say they do, and a Red Town Hall that isn't red because it's communist, and whose chronicle in stone was rebuilt from photographs lent by ordinary Berliners.
At Hackescher Markt, policemen from the local station warned people of raids; in the courtyards next door, a businessman got his own courtyards back without ever returning.
You start at the opera house an impatient king opened before it was finished, and at the cathedral where Bernhard Lichtenberg prayed for the persecuted until he was reported.
The street where the Wall ran past people's front doors: neighbours jumping into firemen's safety sheets, a 145-metre tunnel, a bullet whose owner was changed by propaganda, a church blown up, and a 19-year-old policeman who leapt the barbed wire.
Soon come Ignasi Blanch's mural in Catalan and the CV painted by a former political prisoner.
Opposite stands the palace of the kings: blown up by the GDR, replaced by the Palast der Republik and later rebuilt, with a balcony that survived because a republic was proclaimed from it.
Streets named after a war, a water tower people still live in, a synagogue tucked away in a courtyard, the Jews' path behind a gate, the bronze neighbour in the square and a brewery that looks like a castle.
Beneath the great concrete block, you'll see what this neighbourhood was meant to become; on Oranienstraße, how it was saved by the people who squatted houses to repair them.
You begin in front of the ministry Göring had built for himself, with more than two thousand offices, where one officer led a circle of resistance.
Berlin alternates broad avenues, courtyards and neighbourhoods with lives of their own. Walk each area slowly and use transport between them: several good walks make more sense than one marathon.
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