Prenzlauer Berg - Friedrichshain - Kreuzberg: a colorful milieu in former slum
Two walking routes north of central Berlin combine food, entertainment, art, and history as well.
One route is to the picturesque neighborhood of Prenzlauer-Berg.
The other route is in the neighborhood of Friedrichshain, mostly in East-Side Gallery, which is a large section of the Berlin Wall (click here).
Two sites were not included in the tracks above because it's pretty hard to reach them on foot. One is Friedrichsfelde Park, which includes the zoo of East Berlin and the nearby beautiful baroque palace (click here).
Another site is Friedrichshain People's Park. It is recommended to go there, in one way or another.
A third group of sites is in Kreuzberg district. Prenzlauer Berg
Prenzlauer Berg is one of the most picturesque places of Berlin. There are many similarities to Montmartre district in Paris. The Berlin residents call it for short Prnezlberg.
The character of the neighborhood has been affected by its main development period in the second half of the 19th century. In those years, the planners wanted to avoid creating a slum, so they tried not to link the blocks of apartments to each other. However, their efforts were proven wrong because of the rapid population increase and rising land prices.
During the communist rule, have poor residents moved out of the neighborhood to new housing projects built for them elsewhere, and in the dilapidated buildings only artists or dissidents stayed. After Berlin was re-united, Prenzlauer-Berg was annexed to the Pankow district, and became one of the most popular residential neighborhoods.
Prenzlauer - Berg has an abundance of pubs, cafes, restaurants and clubs.
Kastanienallee (Chestnut street, in German) and the surrounding street Oderberger Strasse is surrounded by many shops that specialize in young and not expensive fashion design.
The Prenzlauer-Berg Museum is the best source of knowledge about the history of the neighborhood.
Address: Prenzlauer Allee 227.
Transport: U-Bahn line 2 (Senefelderplatz station).
Like Prenzlauer - Berg, Friedrichshain was a blue-collar neighborhood of East Berlin. After the city re-united, it returned to be "somewhere in between": fashion shops, artists studios and pubs have been opened in it one by one.
The name of the quarter comes from the orchard (Hain, in German) planted there by King Friedrich the Great in the 18th century. In 2001 it merged with the adjacent district Kreuzberg.
Kreuzberg (Mount Cross, in German) is one of Berlin's younger neighborhoods. It was founded only in 1920, and is named after a monument set up by the artist and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1821 in Victoria Park, commemorating the Napoleonic wars.
Kreuzberg neighborhood is known today mostly due to its large Turkish community. More than a third of its residents are not citizens of Germany. The area is characterized by high unemployment and low income. During the Cold War, it was part of west Berlin. After Berlin reunited, it merged with Friedrichshain, which was until then part of East Berlin.
