Berlin

Napoleon carted the chariot on top off to Paris; it came back eight years later. On its return an iron cross was set on the goddess's staff, and the present one keeps that. Pariser Platz behind the gate bars traffic and is quiet through the day.

1.3 kilometres of the Wall still stands by the Spree, and in 1990 over a hundred painters covered the river side. Exhaust and tagging wore the images down, so they have been redone more than once, some by the first artists and some by other hands.

2,711 grey slabs stand in a grid on ground that dips, so in the middle they rise over your head. Losing your bearings is the point, and street noise drops away inside. The information rooms under the south-east corner are free and shut on Mondays.

Register your name and date of birth beforehand, and bring that same passport. A spiral ramp inside the dome climbs past a glass floor that looks down into the debating chamber. The mirrored cone in the middle bends sunlight into the room below.

Photography is not allowed in the room that holds the Nefertiti bust, and an attendant stands there the whole time. Only one of her eyes carries an inlaid crystal; the other socket was left hollow.

The old tower, broken open by bombing, was left standing rather than cleared. Berliners call the stump the hollow tooth. The octagon beside it has walls of blue glass blocks, so the inside glows blue. The glass came from a workshop in Chartres.

When the airport shut, the runways stayed and the field opened to the public. Both strips belong to cyclists and skaters, and kites go up over the grass. Opening hours follow sunrise and sunset and shift month by month, so read the board at the gate.

The porcelain cabinet packs Chinese ware onto every wall bracket and along the cornice up to the ceiling. The garden behind the palace has no gate and is free to walk into; only the mausoleum and the Belvedere inside it are ticketed.

The sphere with the viewing deck sits a little over 200 metres up, and the restaurant floor above it turns slowly. Sun on the steel throws a cross-shaped glare, nicknamed the Pope's revenge. A ticket names your slot, and a window seat costs extra.

Eight courtyards run gate to gate like links in a chain, so the block can be crossed without stepping onto the main street. Only the first is faced with glazed tile from top to bottom; the rest are plain render.

An open-air memorial keeping the Wall and border strip along 1.4 kilometres of Bernauer Strasse. Tunnel sites and a Window of Remembrance with victims' photos line the street. The documentation centre tower opposite looks down on the strip and watchtower.

The crossing where foreigners and Allied personnel passed between East and West Berlin in the Cold War. The hut and sandbags mid-street are a replica; the real hut stands in the Allied Museum in Zehlendorf. Photos with costumed soldiers were banned in 2019.

A documentation centre where the Gestapo headquarters and SS command once stood, with no admission charge. Along Niederkirchnerstrasse, 200 metres of the Wall still stand. The outdoor exhibition runs below them, against the excavated cellar walls.

A Protestant cathedral finished in 1905 at the tip of Museum Island, its green dome rising over the Spree. A climb of 270 steps leads to a walkway ringing the dome outside, looking over the city. The crypt below holds rows of Hohenzollern coffins.

Libeskind's zigzag building has no entrance of its own; you enter the baroque house next door and cross underground. The Garden of Exile stands 49 tilted concrete pillars. In one void you walk over thousands of iron faces, and they clank under your feet.

A park laid over what was the death strip behind the Wall. Every Sunday a flea market spills out old East German crockery, second-hand clothes and records. From the hilltop swings, the TV Tower sits straight ahead at sunset.

A column on the great roundabout mid-Tiergarten, topped by a gilded Victoria. You reach it through underground passages rather than across the traffic. From the deck, 285 steps up on foot, a straight avenue runs to the Brandenburg Gate.

A museum in the rebuilt Berlin Palace, which East Germany demolished in 1950, opened in 2021. Three sides recreate the baroque walls, while the east face toward the Spree is plain and modern. The roof terrace puts the cathedral dome right beside you.

A Brachiosaurus skeleton reaching almost to the ceiling fills the central hall, and an original Archaeopteryx fossil is kept here too. The room people linger in is the wet collection, shelves of specimen jars in alcohol behind a glass wall.

A red brick double-deck bridge of 1896, with the U1 train on top and cars and walkers below. During division it was a crossing where West Berliners walked into the East. From the deck you can see Molecule Man, an aluminium sculpture standing mid-river.

A Soviet war cemetery raised in Treptower Park in 1949, where a soldier holding a child stands on a broken swastika. The stone sarcophagi lining the way to the statue carry Stalin quotations in German and Russian, and they were left as they are.

A hill heaped up from the rubble of bombed buildings. Through the Cold War a US listening station on top eavesdropped on Eastern radio; its white radar domes are now covered in murals inside and out. You walk up through the Grunewald forest, and entry is paid.

The concentration camp opened in 1936 at Oranienburg, north of Berlin, whose triangular layout became a model for others. After the war the Soviets ran it as a special camp. From Oranienburg station, the S1 terminus, the walk takes some 20 minutes.

Paintings from Europe spanning the 13th to the 18th century, Rembrandt, Vermeer and Caravaggio among them. It sits in the Kulturforum beside the Philharmonie, far quieter than Museum Island, so you often walk the long rooms on your own.

An island in the Havel reached only by a small ferry. Peacocks wander loose, and a white castle built as a mock ruin for a king in the 1790s stands on the shore. Bicycles and dogs are not allowed across.

The departure hall of the border crossing beside Friedrichstrasse station, named for the tears of East Berliners seeing Western visitors off. It is now a free exhibition on how crossings worked, and the narrow booths used for searches are still there.