What's the must-see thing in Berlin?

The Reichstag dome, not the Brandenburg Gate. The Gate is worth a look. It's 26 metres of sandstone, built in 1791, and you'll walk past it regardless since it sits between the Reichstag and Unter den Linden. But it's a 90-second photo stop. The Reichstag dome is a 45-minute experience that puts Berlin's fractured century under your feet. Norman Foster's 1999 renovation turned the bombed-out parliament into a functioning democracy with a transparent ceiling. You spiral a ramp 47 metres above the plenary hall and watch MPs debate below through glass. The building burned in 1933, took Soviet artillery in 1945 (the shrapnel pocks are still in the stone), was wrapped by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1995, and reopened 4 years later. Free entry, but register on bundestag.de at least 2 weeks ahead with passport details and aim for a slot after 20:00. The dome stays open until midnight, and the Fernsehturm glows red against the eastern sky while the Tiergarten fades to black.

The East Side Gallery runs 1.3 kilometres along Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain. It's the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, painted by 118 artists from 21 countries in 1990. The paint has weathered badly, and some panels were restored in 2009, which made plenty of Berliners furious. You'll hear S-Bahn trains from Ostbahnhof at the north end and smell warm concrete on summer afternoons along the riverside path. Free entry, open 24 hours. Go before 9am if you want to stand in front of Dmitri Vrubel's Fraternal Kiss (Brezhnev and Honecker, lip to lip) without 40 phones in your frame. That said, if the history matters more to you than the murals, the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße in Wedding is the stronger site. It preserves an intact death strip with watchtower foundations and an excavated escape tunnel from the 1960s, and the free documentation centre is better than most of Berlin's paid museums.

Museum Island occupies the northern tip of a Spree river island in Mitte and holds five museums built between 1830 and 1930. The Pergamon Museum tends to top every list, but the situation on the ground has changed. The main hall with the Pergamon Altar closed in October 2023 for renovation that likely won't finish until the mid-2030s. Parts of the collection, including the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (575 BC, 15 metres of glazed blue brick that still holds its colour after 2,600 years), remain on view in the south wing, but check the museum's site before you go. A day pass for all five museums costs €22. If you have time for one, the Neues Museum is currently the strongest pick on the island. It holds the 3,300-year-old Nefertiti bust, which is smaller than most visitors expect. Photography is forbidden in the Nefertiti room. The stone floors and high ceilings cool the air noticeably, even in June.

For a first visit, the walk from the Reichstag to Museum Island covers the three most important sites in a single 2.5-kilometre line. Start at the dome (morning or evening slot), walk 5 minutes south to the Brandenburg Gate on Pariser Platz, then continue east along Unter den Linden for 15 minutes to the island. The Fernsehturm (television tower, 368 metres, built 1968) is visible from most of central Berlin and sits at Alexanderplatz, another 10-minute walk east. The €24.50 ticket gets you to the observation deck at 203 metres, but queues run 45 to 90 minutes without a timed booking. Mind you, Berlin averages around 160 overcast days a year, and the current forecast has it at 17°C with grey skies. Save the €24.50 for a clear day. A Tageskarte AB day pass costs €8.80 and covers every bus, tram, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn line in the city.