Berlin O philia

This is the third part of this project, and the last for the time being. But if you took nice shots of other graffiti and street art, and want to share them with us – please do.

Although we did choose the best, finest looking, most intriguing and/or most interesting artworks from our point of view, what you saw here was really no more than a tiny fragment of the real thing. Check out the previous parts as well.

Berlin Graffiti Project
Berlin Graffiti Project II
Click the images to enlarge (and get into the slideshow mode)

Part 1 of a 3-part project: the best pictures of graffiti and street art in Berlin.

There must be tens of thousands of graffiti and graffiti-like works, scattered all over the city of Berlin. You can find them on walls, buildings, pavements, and ever cars. Some where made by famous artists, like the wonderful East Side Gallery artworks. Other by anonymous artists and anarchists. Read the rest of this entry »

The Jewish Museum in Berlin is a very impressive museum. The building itself, designed by the famous American architect Daniel Libeskind, is something worth seeing. The permanent exhibition is interesting, some parts of it very impressive, even overwhelming. And as if that’s not enough, they also present excellent special (changing) exhibitions.

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This beautiful square in the middle of the Mitte quarter at the center of Berlin, includes the German Cathedral, the French Cathedral and the Konzerthaus. It was laid out from 1688 according to plans of the architect J.A. Nering, and was originally known as Linden Markt, and then Friedrichstädtischer Markt or Neuer Markt. It became known as Gendarmenmarkt because of the old Gendarme regiment that was housed here from 1736 to 1773.
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The Hackeschen Höfe is a complex of eight courtyards, which was built around the turn of the 19th century, and consisted then of a mixture of offices, workshops, factories and residential apartments. The place was renovated in the 1990s.

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This famous and humongous department store, Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe in short), is a major attraction, almost a legend, especially its sixth floor, the food department, which is a temple for the “abundance society” of late capitalism in the Western world.

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Ku’damm is the nickname given to the Kurfürstendamm, the long boulevard sometimes considered as Berlin’s “Champs-Elysées” or “5th Avenue”. The boulevard stretches for 3.5 km, from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, through the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough to Halensee.

The boulevard takes its name from the former Electors (Kurfüsten) of the Roman Empire. During the separation of the city to East and West, it became the main commercial street in West Berlin.

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The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is a protestant church, located at the Breitscheidplatz, one end of the famous Kurfürstendamm boulevard, in the center of former West Berlin. The church was damaged in the war, and left in ruins as a monument to peace and reconciliation.

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The official Berlin tourism site offers a program for East Berlin nostalgia tours, which you can find here. They claim that “The recent history in Berlin has many aspects and different ways of handling. On one hand there is the difficult historical discussion, on the other hand is the (n)ostalgic mood… Our tour shows both sides”.

Another option is taking the “Trabi-safari” tour, which costs between 25 to 35 euros, depending on the number of participants. Information about the “Trabi-safari” can be found in their website.

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The communist era is heavily commemorated in Berlin, with memorials, museums, special tours and more, scattered all over the city. We have already mentioned and elaborated about the Berlin Wall, and mentioned the sweet and sour issue of German Unification, but there still remains a lot to be said.
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