The best things to do in Mitte, Berlin

The best things to do in Mitte, Berlin, include Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, Topographie Des Terrors and the DDR Museum.

Why visit Mitte?

The historic centre of Berlin can provide days of entertainment. Forget chocolate box cutesiness – Mitte is all stern, pompous buildings, historic import and museums. This is the place to do serious tourism, whether that’s walking tours around the sites linked to the Nazi regime or taking the classic art and antiquities dose on Museum Island.

Attractions in Mitte, Berlin

Mitte is also home to Berlin’s icon, the Brandenburg Gate, with its ‘Quadriga’ statue of four galloping horses on top. Most tours leave from either outside here or the Alexanderplatz TV tower.

But there are doses of real life, too, notably around Hackesche Markt, where there are an abundance of terrace cafes and indie shops – as well as some quality street art if you start nosying down the passageways on Rosenthalerstrasse.

World War II attractions in Mitte, Berlin

Next to the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a field of grey, concrete stelae of different sizes. It’s deliberately abstract, and hugely unsettling to walk through.

It should be allied with a visit to Topographie Des Terrors, which is unflinching in explaining how the Nazi regime took power and the horrors of the system.

Best Mitte museums

Elsewhere, Mitte can be a bit of a museums blitz. The DDR Museum – looking at life in the former East Germany – is in equal measures grim and quirky, but Museum Island contains the big-hitters.

The Neues Museum majors in Ancient Egypt, the Altes Museum in Greece and Rome, the Pergamonmuseum on monumental ancient architecture and the Alte Nationalgalerie on 19^th century art.

More Berlin travel

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