Tiergarten

The Tiergarten is Berlin's central park — a 210-hectare sweep of woodland, meadows, canals, and gardens that sits right at the heart of the city. Originally a royal hunting ground for the Hohenzollern court, it was redesigned as a formal landscape park in the 19th century by Peter Joseph Lenné, before being almost completely destroyed during World War II. Berliners chopped down the trees for firewood, and the park became a patchwork of vegetable allotments just to survive the postwar famine. The forest you walk through today was planted almost entirely in the 1950s, which makes it remarkable that it feels so mature, so shaded, and so genuinely wild in places.

What you actually do in the Tiergarten depends entirely on the day. On a sunny weekend it fills with families barbecuing (Berliners take their grilling rights very seriously — designated barbecue areas get packed early), joggers circling the paths, cyclists cutting through on their way to work, and people simply lying in the grass reading. The park has real landmarks embedded within it: the Victory Column (Siegessäule), that gilded goddess perched 67 metres up and offering a panoramic view across Berlin's skyline, sits at the centre of the Großer Stern roundabout. The Soviet War Memorial stands near the Brandenburg Gate end. The English Garden section near Bellevue Palace is one of the calmer corners, often overlooked by tourists.

The Tiergarten runs roughly east-west, connecting the Brandenburg Gate to the west end near Zoologischer Garten station. It's not a place you see so much as a place you spend time — the best approach is to wander without a plan, let the paths surprise you, and find one of the canal-side benches for lunch. Bring food from one of the nearby markets or bakeries rather than relying on the park's limited kiosk options. The park is free, open at all hours, and beloved by Berliners in a way that few tourist sights are.