Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to Berlin

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

From the section.

Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

With its notoriously hedonistic nightlife, tumultuous history and easy-going, cosmopolitan vibe, Berlin is indisputably one of Europes most compelling cities. Add a generous feeling of physical space (thanks to a rare combination of large-scale urban planning and a relatively low population of just 3.6 million), a cutting-edge cultural scene and the emergence of a buzzy start-up culture, and its easy to see why so many people are not just visiting the freewheeling German capital but moving here in droves.

Indeed, Berlins transformation since the fall of its notoriously divisive Wall has been nothing short of extraordinary, and its 1989 rebirth is key to understanding the citys youthful vitality. The first wave of post- Wende (turning-point) settlers artists, squatters, musicians, DJs set the edgy, alternative tone that still drives the city, despite encroaching gentrification and commercialization. Cheaper than London, liberal, multicultural and still very much at the heart of the European Union, Berlin today has grown into one of Europes prime destinations for hip young things and entrepreneurial types alike.

Beneath the future-oriented, upbeat veneer, however, remain the poignant scars of the turbulent twentieth century, and its onslaught of war, partition and totalitarianism. A wealth of museums and memorials confront the past unflinchingly, commemorating and meticulously documenting the methodologies and crimes of successive authoritarian regimes, though a certain stream of nostalgia still lingers for the lighter aspects of the GDR, which remains vivid in the memories of many older Berliners.

This traumatic history has also taken its toll on the city visually. Not only was much of Berlin, once the grand capital of imperial Prussia, reduced to rubble at the end of World War II but many ugly and uninspired new buildings were thrown up afterwards. Following a second spate of frenetic construction in the immediate wake of the Wende , when a host of high-profile architects were commissioned to create an aesthetic suitable for the born-again capital, the city now presents a somewhat chaotic architectural jigsaw . It might not always be easy on the eye, but the urban cityscape seems to suit Berlins slightly dishevelled nature, with an unconventional charm all its own and the overall effect is softened by the many parks, gardens and playgrounds that help make it such an appealing place to live.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, Berlin is a city seemingly in a perpetual state of transformation that repays repeated visits. Whether youre drawn by its world-class museums, endlessly absorbing history or frenetic, 24-hour nightlife, visit now and youll be hooked forever.

FROM TOP SCHLOSS CHARLOTTENBURG; HAMBURGER BAHNHOF; OLYMPIASTADION