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Germany

Berlin

Wet specimens, abandoned spy stations, and a brothel you can sleep in.

Berlin does dark differently. Less crumbling romance, more concrete, clinical and bleak in a way that suits it. The macabre here is 20th century: specimen collections, abandoned spy stations, ruins the city has not decided what to do with.

It rewards being curious and willing to walk. Half the best sites are technically falling apart, which is the point.

Go when Any day the sky is flat grey, which is most of them.

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Haunt

What to See

Ossuaries, oddity museums, cemeteries and the properly strange.

  1. Museum of Medical History (Charité)

    Mitte anatomyspecimens

    Rudolf Virchow’s pathology collection, shelves of wet specimens and anatomical preparations in a restored 19th-century museum. Clinical, unflinching, quietly a lot.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  2. Teufelsberg

    Grunewald abandonedcold war

    An abandoned NSA listening station of graffitied radar domes, built on a hill of war rubble. The domes do strange things to sound. Go on a day it is open.

    Best shot The torn radar domes with light and graffiti bleeding through the fabric. One of the most shot ruins in Germany.

    • Solo-friendly

  3. Dorotheenstadt Cemetery

    Mitte cemeteryfree

    A walled cemetery where Brecht and Hegel lie under ivy. Central and almost always empty.

    Best shot Ivy, iron crosses and dead philosophers under a low grey sky.

    • Quiet
    • Solo-friendly

  4. Designpanoptikum

    Mitte museumsurreal

    A one-man surreal museum of industrial objects, old medical machines and mannequins built into something between a Lynch set and a bad dream. Nothing else like it.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  5. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

    Mitte memorialfree

    Peter Eisenman’s field of 2,711 grey concrete stelae, a vast undulating grid you walk down into and lose yourself in. A memorial to genocide, so treat it as one.

    Best shot The field of 2,711 grey stelae; photograph the architecture, never yourself. Read the room.

    • Quiet

  6. Oberbaumbrücke

    Friedrichshain bridgefree

    A red-brick neo-gothic double-decker bridge over the Spree, turrets and all, that once joined the divided East and West. Best at dusk.

    Best shot From the riverbank as the lights come up and the water goes black.

Rest

Where to Stay

B&Bs, haunted old hotels, Victorian piles. No hostels, ever.

  1. Provocateur

    $$$$
    Charlottenburg boudoir1920s

    A 1920s bordello-themed hotel drowning in oxblood velvet, brass and low gold light. Decadent and completely committed to the bit.

    • Adults only
    • Quiet

  2. Hüttenpalast

    $$
    Neukölln weirdunique

    Sleep in a vintage caravan or a little wooden hut parked inside a former factory. Strange and cosy.

    • Quiet
    • Solo-friendly

  3. Michelberger Hotel

    $$$
    Friedrichshain designvalue

    Dark, art-strewn and full of character, right by the river. Great value, though the bar downstairs runs late and young.

    • Solo-friendly
    • Party scene

Feast

Where to Eat & Drink

Candlelit cellars, dark bars, rooms with history in the walls.

  1. Clärchens Ballhaus

    $$
    Mitte historicballroom

    A 1913 dance hall that outlived every regime. Eat upstairs in the cracked-mirror ballroom, all peeling gilt. Time travel with a wine list.

    • Solo-friendly

  2. Green Door

    $$$
    Schöneberg cocktailshidden

    Ring the bell to get into a dim red checkerboard cocktail bar smuggled out of another decade. Serious drinks, no attitude.

    • Adults only
    • Quiet

  3. Kumpelnest 3000

    $$
    Tiergarten barweird

    A former brothel turned gloriously tacky late-night institution. Chandeliers, red flock wallpaper, a crowd that never goes home. This one is for after midnight.

    • Adults only
    • Party scene
Next destination Kraków → A cathedral carved out of salt, and bars that never seem to close.