Berlin has not always been the city we know today. In just over two centuries, it became a major European capital, was destroyed by war, divided by the Wall, and then radically transformed by reunification.
We will start from Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Prussian Berlin, to follow the major transformations that have changed the city: from the birth of the modern metropolis to the Nazi dictatorship, from the destruction of the war to the memory of the Holocaust, and finally to the rebirth of Berlin after the fall of the Wall.
We will walk through some of the city's most significant sites – the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the site of Hitler's Bunker, the new Potsdamer Platz – observing how history has left its mark on the urban landscape.
Finally, at Potsdamer Platz, we will encounter contemporary Berlin: a square that before the war was one of the hearts of the metropolis, that during the Cold War was located next to the Wall, and that after 1989 became one of the largest experiments in architecture and urban transformation in Europe.
It is precisely this succession of transformations – growth, destruction, division and rebirth – that makes Berlin a unique city.
By the end of the tour, you'll have a new way of interpreting Berlin: not only its monuments and memorials, but also its squares, buildings, and empty spaces. And above all, you will have understood how today's Berlin came to be.
