This cluster of museums and concert halls west of Potsdamer Platz is a
concentration of culture that anyone could ask for. Start with the Berliner
Philharmonie, a concert hall with otherworldly acoustics, before walking over
to the Kammer musikaal or Chamber Music
Hall and the neo-Romanesque confection of
Matthäuskirche. The must-see of the complex is the Gemäldegalerie or Picture
Gallery, which boasts a wealth of European painting from the 13th to the 18th
centuries. Seven rooms are reserved for paintings by
German masters, among them Dürer, Cranach the Elder, and Holbein. A special
collection has works of the Italian masters -- Botticelli, Titian, Giotto,
Lippi, and Raphael, as well as paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters of the
15th and 16th centuries: Van Eyck, Bosch, Brueghel the Elder, and van der
Weyden. The museum also holds the world's second-largest Rembrandt collection.
Other highlights of the Kulturforum include the Kupfer Stichkobinett or Museum
of Prints & Drawings and the Escher-like Kunstgewerbemuseum or Museum
of Applied Arts.
Potsdam
On the Havel River
just beyond the southwestern tip of Greater Berlin, Potsdam
was the address of German nobility from the 17th century onward. They all left
behind palaces as testament to their egos. Schloss Sanssouci or “No Worries
Castle” was commissioned by Friedrich the Great in the mid-18th century and
emulates the French grandeur and stateliness.
Also here is Wilhelm II's mock-Tudor mansion, which was used by the
Allies in July 1945 at the famous Potsdam Conference to determine the fate of a
defeated Germany.
Stasi Headquarters
The old headquarters of the East German Secret Police, the
notorious Stasi, is in the graceless suburbs of East Berlin.
Through a huge network of full-time staff, aided by part-time informers
numbering in the millions, the Stasi infiltrated East
Germany with neurotic overkill, creating and
fuelling an atmosphere of fear and mistrust to the extent that family dinner
table conversations were curtailed. The headquarters of this once feared organization
is now a museum, filled with artifacts of their work, including letter opening
machines, spy cameras, and wire tapping devices.