Berlin Districts
An understanding of Berlin’s layout and districts will prove very helpful when reading our blog entries or Berlin property listings from NDC Real Estate Consulting GmbH. The information and image below are from the Berlin travel guide at wikitravel.org. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0.
In Berlin there is more than one downtown area. Berlin has many boroughs or districts, called Bezirke, and each borough has its distinctive style. Each Bezirk is composed of several Kieze—a Berlin term referring to “neighbourhood,” with their unique style. Some boroughs of Berlin, as noted below, are more worthy of a visitor’s attention than others.
Berlin Districts
Following are the boroughs/districts of greatest interest to travelers:
- Mitte— The historical center of Berlin, the nucleus of the former East Berlin, and the emerging city center. Many cafes, restaurants, museums, galleries and clubs are abundant throughout the district, along with many sites of historic interest.
- Charlottenburg— This borough is the heart of City West and centered around the Schloss Charlottenburg.
- Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg— Associated with the left wing youth culture, artists and Turkish immigrants, this borough is somewhat noisier than most, packed with lots of cafes, bars and clubs, but also with some museums in Kreuzberg near the border to Mitte.
- Prenzlauer Berg— A trendy district in the former East Berlin which is undergoing gentrification and is located north of the city center. Popular with students, artists and media professionals, it is made up of lots of cafes and bars.
- Schöneberg— Cosy area for ageing hippies, young families and homosexuals. Famous are the markets on Saturdays, the street cafes (e.g. Akazienstraße) and the laissez-faire life style.
- Zehlendorf— Zehlendorf is one of the greenest and wealthiest districts in Berlin and the biggest university in town (Freie Universität) is located here, but often ignored are the great museums and some important historical buildings.
Areas of interest that are not boroughs/districts but known rather by their own names:
- Ku’Damm (short for Kurfürstendamm)— One of the main shopping streets in former West Berlin, especially for luxury goods. Many great restaurants and hotels are here and also on the side roads. Located in the borough Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.
- Potsdamer Platz— Once divided in two by the Berlin Wall, this area has been newly developed since reunification in an ultra-modern style. It has a large shopping center and two movie theatre complexes (3D IMAX and a multiplex showing only original English versions of first-run films). On fine days, the piazza under the spectacular canopy of the Sony Center (designed by Helmut Jahn), has become a mecca for both Berliners and tourists.This is located in the southwest corner of the borough Mitte.
Since January 2001, Berlin has been officially divided into 12 new large boroughs (Bezirke), which is a consolidation of the 23 old, smaller districts (Stadtteile, Bezirke) undertaken for administrative efficiency. The smaller districts still remain foremost in popular conceptions of the city and are generally of a more practical size and cultural division for visitors as well. New borough names are usually compounded from the old district names (e.g. Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf merged to Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf). To make things more confusing, the name Mitte, which was the name of one of the old smaller district that was consolidated, is also used for the new large borough. So much for efficiency.