Nice Walks, Nature & History: Berlin's Best Parks
The Tiergarten park in Berlin is beautiful all year round, but Autumn is my favourite
Berlin is made up of 18% green space making it the greenest of Europe’s capitals. You can find yourself very easily leaving the hustle and bustle of the city to stroll through a magical wintry scene or spending a lazy summer afternoon lying out in the sun after a busy morning of running the museum gauntlet. As this is Berlin you’ll never be in a park that isn’t layered with history from the ancient to the very recent.
Let’s take a look at four of Berlin’s historic parks, the Tiergarten, Tempelhofer Feld, Treptower Park, and Schillerpark.
Tiergarten
It’s hard to beat a golden afternoon in the Tiergarten
Starting with the largest and oldest established public park, Tiergarten is the most frequented park in Berlin and probably the one you’re more likely to stumble into after visiting the city’s central landmarks. It’s home to the Berlin Zoo, a Soviet War memorial, English Gardens and much more. Established as a hunting grounds for the Elector of Brandenburg in 1527, animals were released into the park and then fenced in so that they couldn’t escape, which sounds like cheating to me. The much more civically minded Frederick the Great who wasn’t as keen on the hunt opened the park to the public.
“By the end of the Battle of Berlin most of the trees of the Tiergarten had been ripped up for fuel, and the air raids had taken their toll.”
Multiple landscape designers would redesign the park in a variety of ways over the centuries but not until the 20th century would the park see its most dramatic and devastating changes. With the rise of the Nazis in 1933, Hitler’s eventual plan to reconstruct the city and build his Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital City), would have seen the Tiergarten play a central role with the main East/West Boulevard being widened and the Victory column relocated from outside the Reichstag to the Große Stern in the centre of the park where it still stands today. By the end of the Battle of Berlin most of the trees of the Tiergarten had been ripped up for fuel, and the air raids had taken their toll. In the immediate aftermath of the War the Soviet occupying forces began construction of what would become the first of three large Soviet war memorials around the city. It also fell into West Berlin, meaning some pretty high profile politicians would drive right by a Soviet war memorial on visits to Berlin, John F. Kennedy not least among them! 2000 Soviet troops are buried at the site of the memorial, which would become cut off from those who built it with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. A Soviet Guard of honour was stationed at the memorial throughout the Cold War.
The Tiergarten Soviet war memorial - situated in former West Berlin
Since reunification the Tiergarten has seen a lot of major development around the outskirts, including the refurbishment of the Reichstag, the high rises of Potsdamer Platz and the construction of three memorials, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, built in 2008, the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, built in 2012, and the Memorial for the "euthanasia" murder victims on the Southern edge of the park in 2014.
My advice would be to use the maps dotted around but allow yourself to dive in and see where the park takes you, and you might come across an unexpected clothes swap at the rose garden, a particularly vocal yoga session or some well established and totally accepted German nudity!
Top tip: the Ultimate Berlin Tour and the Nazi Germany & WWII tour each include a walk through the Tiergarten, albeit fully clothed.
Tempelhofer Feld
From military parade ground to airport, to Europe’s largest park, Tempelhofer Feld is one of Berlin’s most special locations
Few parks encapsulate a city’s past in the way that Tempelhofer Feld does for Berlin. Named for the order of Knights Templar situated there from 1247-1312, this area has since been used as a military training field, an amusement park, and hosts the oldest surviving football club in all of Germany, (BFC Germania, founded 1888.) Today 200,000 visitors per week enter the park for kite surfing, cycling, urban gardening, raving, the list goes on!
Most famously it’s known for its massive former airport building and airfield in use from 1909 until its final flight took off in 2008. Orville Wright would set a legendary record of 172 metres in his biplane in 1909 and from then on airshows continued on the site until the official establishment of Airport Tempelhof in 1923.
“Tempelhof’s finest hour would come in 1948-1949 with the Berlin Blockade and subsequent Airlift”
In blatant violation of the Versailles Treaty after the First World War, Reich’s Aviation Minister Hermann Göring would establish Nazi Germany’s Aviation Ministry in 1936 leading to the expansion of the Airport, which would create one of the largest buildings in the world - almost 1 mile from end to end. A Gestapo prison and concentration camp would be established nearby, named KZ Columbia, with thousands of forced labourers being incarcerated there by the time the site had been liberated by the Soviets in 1945.
Tempelhof’s finest hour would come in 1948-1949 with the Berlin Blockade and subsequent Airlift or ‘Luftbrücke’. Increasing tensions between the occupying allies in Berlin after WW2 would come to a head after the establishment of a new currency in the western sectors of the city. In retaliation Soviet leader Stalin commanded the blockade of all roads and waterways in and out of the city, in an attempt to starve out the western sectors. However, with the use of three internationally protected flight paths in and out of the city the western allies began one of the largest scale airlifts in history. Tempelhof, under the administration of the United States, was the focal point for the Airlift with Tegel airfield being administered in the French sector and Gatow in the British sector. After the embarrassment of the Airlift’s continued success the Soviet blockade was lifted after 11 months, with the steady stream of supplies continuing on for a further 2 months, just in case.
In a much more contemporary representation of the city of Berlin, a public referendum was held on what to do with the site after the airport’s closure, sell off to developers or try something unique for a rapidly expanding city. In 2014 a referendum put to citizens of Berlin definitively decided that the airfield would remain an open space for the public, making it increasingly unique in comparison to other rapidly expanding, increasingly expensive cities today.
You can access Tempelhofer Feld using three main entrances. Tours of the monumental building are offered in English and German. Some kiosks and cafes are dotted across the park but best take some snacks and a good pair of shoes to give yourself the time and energy to take in this incredible park.
Treptower Park
Berlin’s largest Soviet War Memorial can be found in Treptower Park
To the South East of the City lies Treptower Park, originally an area on the rural outskirts of the city, this was the spot chosen for the Berlin Industrial Exhibition of 1896. Why not say what it was, a World Fair like the one held in Paris you ask? Well, Kaiser Wilhelm is in one of his moods and will do anything to stop Berlin becoming too much like Paris, which according to him was the ‘largest brothel in the world.’ However the merchants association of Berlin pressed on, and with a name change hosted what would become the largest world fair of its kind, taking up 900,000 square metres and thought to have attracted over 7 million people over its 168 day establishment.
The Archenhold Observatory which began as a temporary installation during the Industrial Fair can, alongside its museum, still be visited today. The Great Refracting Telescope is the longest adjustable telescope in the world, pleasingly named ‘Himmelskanone’ or Celestial Cannon. It was here at the observatory that Albert Einstein gave his first ever public talk on the theory of General Relativity on the 2nd June 1915.
“Albert Einstein gave his first ever public talk on the theory of General Relativity at the Archenhold Observatory.”
Four years after WW2 a Soviet War memorial was established to commemorate the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who were killed in the Battle of Berlin. Thousands of soldiers are buried there. The imposing memorial stretches over 10 hectares, sarcophagi with quotes from Stalin lead the way up to an enormous central bronze statue of a soldier clutching a child, standing atop a broken swastika. Being located on the eastern side, it became the central memorial of East Germany during the post war division. The memorial serves every year as a site of commemoration, singing and celebration by those from the former Soviet Union and their relatives, although since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, this event has been much more subdued, and a lot more tense.
Walking along the banks of the river you eventually come across the Abtei Brücke (Abbey Bridge), the oldest composite steel bridge in Germany, leading over to the Insel der Jugend, a fantastic spot on a summer’s afternoon with a Biergarten and live music. If you prefer to save your legs a little, you don’t have to wander too far from the S-Bahn Station of Treptower Park to find a nice spot along the river and watch the leisure boats go by.
Schiller Park
Walther Rathenau’s murder by photo-fascists in 1922 was a dark sign of things to come in Germany. Rathenau was Jewish.
Schiller Park lies in the heart of the historically working-class Wedding district in the north of Berlin and it gives you an idea of living and playing in Berlin today. Designed for working class people in a city that was seeing expansion at an unprecedented level, Schiller park was the first park of its kind built for the northern residents of the city, its opening coinciding with the 100 year anniversary of the death of German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller.
“The statue of Schiller... was made from the melted down statue of Walther Rathenau during the National Socialist era.”
The statue of Schiller that sits atop the imposing bastion at one corner of the southern meadow (Schülerwiese), does not date back to the inauguration of the park however and was made from the melted down statue of Walther Rathenau during the National Socialist era. Rathenau was Germany’s first and to this day only Jewish foreign minister. His dealings with Britain and France regarding Germany’s excessive reparations payments following the end of WWI during the very early days of the Weimar Republic were seen as a betrayal of Germany by the Nazis, and therefore his statue was seen as ideal scrap metal. Introducing Schiller to the park, centred so squarely in the workers’ district of ‘Red Wedding,’ was thought to be an opportunity to bring more of a traditionalist German humanism to the park and it’s locals, rather than a Jewish man already murdered by fascists in 1922.
Discover more about Walther Rathenau’s Murder
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