4 Best Sights in Berlin, Germany

Once the pride of Prussian Berlin and the city's premier landmark, the Brandenburger Tor was left in a desolate no-man's-land when the wall was built. Since the wall's dismantling, the sandstone gateway has become the scene of the city's Unification Day and New Year's Eve parties. This is the sole remaining gate of 14 built by Carl Langhans in 1788–91, designed as a triumphal arch for King Frederick Wilhelm II. Troops paraded through the gate after successful campaigns—the last time in 1945, when victorious Red Army troops took Berlin. The upper part of the gate, together with its chariot and Goddess of Victory, was destroyed in the war. In 1957 the original molds were discovered in West Berlin, and a new quadriga was cast in copper and presented as a gift to the people of East Berlin. A tourist information center is in the south part of the gate.

This concentration camp was established in 1936 and held 200,000 prisoners from every nation in Europe, including British officers and Joseph Stalin's son. It is estimated that tens of thousands died here, among them more than 12,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Between 1945 and 1950 the Soviets used the site as a prison, and malnutrition and disease claimed the lives of 20% of the inmates. The East German government made the site a concentration-camp memorial in April 1961. Many original facilities remain; the barracks and other buildings now hold exhibits. Allow three hours at the memorial, whose exhibits and sites are spread apart. Oranienburg is 35 km (22 miles) north of Berlin's center.

The lovely lakeside setting of this Berlin villa belies the unimaginable Holocaust atrocities planned here. This elegant edifice hosted the fateful conference held on January 20, 1942, at which Nazi leaders and German bureaucrats, under SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, planned the systematic deportation and mass extinction of Europe's Jewish population. Today this so-called "Endlösung der Judenfrage" (final solution of the Jewish question) is illustrated with a chilling exhibit that documents the conference and, more extensively, the escalation of persecution against Jews and the Holocaust itself. A reference library offers source materials in English.

This sprawling country estate consists of a beautiful early-18th-century Schloss, a manor house, and grounds complete with a working farm—all of which are quite a contrast to the stark, modernist 1960s and 1970s housing that fills the Britz neighborhood. Don’t miss the small research library in the manor’s attic or the restaurant located in the so-called Schweizer Haus, the old dairyman’s living quarters, and manned by Matthias Buchholz, a Michelin-starred chef who left a career in Berlin’s top restaurants to make something of this local outpost. The Museum Neukölln is on the grounds, too, in the former cow stalls of the Schloss Britz, and you'll also find special exhibitions (such as Toulouse-Lautrec posters) inside the Schloss.