Berlin for families

Must-see attractions

Berlin's must-sees are not a checklist so much as a walking argument about the twentieth century, staged along a two-kilometer axis between the Tiergarten and the Spree. The city keeps its landmarks close: a triumphal arch, a parliament, a broadcast tower and a cathedral all sit within a brisk half-hour of each other, and the harder monuments, to memory rather than to victory, sit right among them. This list is for the visitor who wants the civic core in a single unhurried day, and who would rather stand at 1 Pariser Platz than tick off outer-ring museums they will forget by the flight home. It rewards walking. It rewards reading the plaques. Skip the hop-on bus loops that promise to compress all of this into 90 minutes; Berlin does not compress, and the point is to feel the distances between the eras that these twelve buildings represent. Go in rank order or invert it, but do not try to see everything indoors: the outdoor pieces carry as much of the story.