Berlin Palace

Schloßplatz (German for "Palace Square" or "Castle Square") is a square located on Museum Island (Museumsinsel) in Berlin, Germany. It measures about 225 m by 175 m, with its long side oriented on an axis approximately southwest/northeast. At its west corner is the Schlossbrücke (Palace Bridge), from which Unter den Linden leads west to the Brandenburg Gate. From the same corner, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße runs northeast alongside the square and on to Alexanderplatz. Until the early 20th century, only the square south of the palace was so named, the square north of it being the Lustgarten. "Schloßplatz" is also a common name for squares in many German-speaking countries. Other cities which have a Schloßplatz include Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Munich and Dresden.

The Humboldt Forum is a museum of non-European art on the Museum Island in the historic centre of Berlin. Named in honour of the Prussian scholars Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, it combines three rebuilt baroque façades of the former Royal Palace, a contemporary exterior overlooking the Spree river and a modern interior designed by Franco Stella. Considered as the "German equivalent" of the British Museum, the Humboldt Forum will mainly house the non-European collections of the Berlin State Museums, temporary exhibitions and public events. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it opened digitally on 16 December 2020 and became accessible for the general public on 20 July 2021. The Berlin Palace complex, which houses the Humboldt Forum, has been criticized as an attempt to downplay Germany's history of Prussian militarism. New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman called it a "fake Baroque palace...a stage-set of an old capital, with phony, manufactured charm, erasing traces of the bad years of the 20th century."

The Palace of the Republic (German: Palast der Republik) was a building in Berlin that hosted the Volkskammer, the parliament of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), from 1976 to 1990. The Palace of the Republic, also known as the "People's Palace", was located on Museum Island in the Mitte area of East Berlin, on the site of the former Berlin Palace between the Lustgarten and Schlossplatz, near the West Berlin border. The Palast was completed in 1976 to house the Volkskammer, also serving various cultural purposes including two large auditoria, art galleries, a theatre, a cinema, 13 restaurants, 5 beer halls, a bowling alley, 4 pool rooms, a billiards room, a rooftop skating rink, a private gym with spa, a casino, a medical station, a post office, a police station with an underground cellblock, an indoor basketball court, an indoor swimming pool, private barbershops and salons, public and private restrooms and a discothèque. In the early 1980s, a video game arcade for the children of Volkskammer members and staff replaced one of the restaurants. In 1990, the Palast became vacant following German reunification and was closed for health reasons, due to there being more than 5,000 tonnes of asbestos in the building (despite asbestos being outlawed in construction in East Germany in 1968). In 2003, the Bundestag voted for the demolition of the Palast and replacement with a reconstruction of the Berlin Palace which had been demolished in the 1950s. The Palast was demolished between 2006 and 2008, and the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace began in 2013 and was completed in 2020.

The Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum Berlin) is one of the Berlin State Museums (German: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in the museum complex in Dahlem, along with the Museum of Asian Art (German: Museum für Asiatische Kunst) and the Museum of European Cultures (German: Museum Europäischer Kulturen). The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the largest and most important collections of works of art and culture from outside Europe in the world. Its highlights include important objects from the Sepik River, Hawaii, the Kingdom of Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Tanzania, China, the Pacific Coast of North America, Mesoamerica, the Andes, as well as one of the first ethnomusicology collections of sound recordings (the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv). The Ethnological Museum was founded in 1873 and opened its doors in 1886 as the Royal Museum for Ethnology (German: Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde), but its roots go back to the 17th-century Kunstkammer of the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia. As the museum’s collections expanded in the early 20th century, the museum quickly outgrew its facility in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße (today named Stresemannstraße). A new building was erected in Dahlem to house the museum’s store rooms and study collections. In the Second World War, the main building of the museum was heavily damaged. It was demolished in 1961, and the buildings in Dahlem (in what was then West Berlin) were reconfigured to serve as the museum's exhibition spaces. Following German reunification, although many of the Berlin museum collections were relocated, the collections of the Ethnological Museum remained in Dahlem. Starting in 2000, concrete plans were developed to relocate the collections back to the center of the city. As a result, in 2019, the Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art are scheduled to reopen in the Humboldt Forum in the reconstructed Berlin City Palace (German: Berliner Stadtschloss) immediately south of the main Museum Island complex.

Cölln (German: [ˈkœln]) was the twin city of Old Berlin (Altberlin) from the 13th century to the 18th century. Cölln was located on the Fisher Island section of Spree Island, opposite Altberlin on the western bank of the River Spree, until the cities were merged by Frederick I of Prussia to form Berlin in 1710. Today, the former site of Cölln is the historic core of the modern Mitte locality of the Berlin-Mitte borough in central Berlin.

The Neuer Marstall (English: New Stables) is a listed historic building in Berlin, Germany located on the Schloßplatz and the Spree River. Completed in 1901 and facing the former Royal Palace, the neo-Baroque "New Stables" once sheltered the Royal equerry, horses and carriages of Imperial Germany. The complex also included three enclosed courtyards, a riding school, and the Knights College. At the end of World War I, this was where revolutionaries hatched plans that brought down the Hohenzollern dynasty during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Severely damaged in World War II, the building was partially repaired in the 1960s and used as an exhibition space for the Berlin Academy of Arts. After more renovations in 2005, the building became the home of the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music and the Berlin City Library. More restoration work has continued since 2007. Lonely Planet lists the Neuer Marstall at number 79 in their 815 "things to do" in Berlin.

Liebknecht Bridge (German: Liebknechtbrücke) is a bridge in Berlin, Germany.

Rathaus Bridge (German: Rathausbrücke, "Town Hall Bridge") is a bridge in the central Mitte district of Berlin, Germany. Rebuilt in 2012, it is one of the oldest connections between the historic city centres of Alt-Berlin and Cölln across the Spree river. It is named after the nearby Rotes Rathaus city hall.

Marx-Engels-Forum is a public park in the central Mitte district of Berlin, the capital of Germany. It is named for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto of 1848 and regarded as two of the most influential people in the socialist movement. The park was created by the authorities of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1986.

The DDR Museum is a museum in the centre of Berlin. The museum is located in the former governmental district of East Germany, right on the river Spree, opposite the Berlin Cathedral. The museum is the 11th most visited museum in Berlin.Its exhibition depicts life in the former East Germany (known in German as the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) in a direct "hands-on" way. For example, a covert listening device ("bug") gives visitors the sense of being "under surveillance". One can also try DDR clothes on in the recreated tower block apartment, change TV channels or use an original typewriter. The exhibition has three themed areas: “Public Life”; “State and Ideology” and “Life in a Tower Block”. Each of them is presented under a critical light: the positives as well as the negatives sides of the DDR are explored in this exhibition. A total of 35 modules illustrate these three themes: Media, literature, music, culture, family, private niche, health, equality, diet, childhood, youth, partnership, fashion, border, Berlin, tra c, education, work, consumption, construction, living, free time, vacation, environment, party, Ministry for State Security, economy, state, ideology, army, brother states, wall, opposition, penal system and authority. The museum was opened on July 15, 2006, as a private museum. Private funding is unusual in Germany, because German museums are normally funded by the state. The museum met some opposition from state-owned museums, who considered possibly "suspect" a private museum and were concerned that the museum could be used as an argument to question the public funding of museums in general.In 2008, the DDR Museum was nominated for the European Museum of the Year Award.

East Berlin was the de facto capital city of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognize East Berlin as the GDR's capital, nor the GDR's authority to govern East Berlin. On 3 October 1990, the day Germany was officially reunified, East and West Berlin formally reunited as the city of Berlin.

The AquaDom in Berlin, Germany, is a 25 m (82 ft) tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with built-in transparent elevator. It is located inside the Radisson Collection Hotel in the DomAquarée complex at Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in Berlin-Mitte.The DomAquarée complex also contains offices, a museum, a restaurant, and the aquarium Berlin Sea Life Centre.