East Berlin

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.

Berlin ( bur-LIN, German: [bɛʁˈliːn] (listen)) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constituent states, Berlin is surrounded by the State of Brandenburg and contiguous with Potsdam, Brandenburg's capital. Berlin's urban area, which has a population of around 4.5 million, is the second most populous urban area in Germany after the Ruhr. The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions. There has been an unsuccessful attempt to unify both states in 1996 and the states cooperate on many matters to this day. Berlin straddles the banks of the Spree, which flows into the Havel (a tributary of the Elbe) in the western borough of Spandau. Among the city's main topographical features are the many lakes in the western and southeastern boroughs formed by the Spree, Havel and Dahme, the largest of which is Lake Müggelsee. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. About one-third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers, canals and lakes. The city lies in the Central German dialect area, the Berlin dialect being a variant of the Lusatian-New Marchian dialects. First documented in the 13th century and at the crossing of two important historic trade routes, Berlin became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417–1701), the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). Berlin in the 1920s was the third-largest municipality in the world. After World War II and its subsequent occupation by the victorious countries, the city was divided; West Berlin became a de facto exclave of West Germany, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (from August 1961 to November 1989) and East German territory. East Berlin was declared capital of East Germany, while Bonn became the West German capital. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all of Germany. Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and science. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues. Berlin serves as a continental hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination. Significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Berlin is home to world-renowned universities such as the Humboldt University, the Technical University, the Free University, the University of the Arts, ESMT Berlin, the Hertie School, and Bard College Berlin. Its Zoological Garden is the most visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. With Babelsberg being the world's first large-scale movie studio complex, Berlin is an increasingly popular location for international film productions. The city is well known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts and a very high quality of living. Since the 2000s Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene.Berlin contains three World Heritage Sites: Museum Island; the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin; and the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates. Other landmarks include the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag building, Potsdamer Platz, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Berlin Wall Memorial, the East Side Gallery, the Berlin Victory Column, Berlin Cathedral and the Berlin Television Tower, the tallest structure in Germany. Berlin has numerous museums, galleries, libraries, orchestras, and sporting events. These include the Old National Gallery, the Bode Museum, the Pergamon Museum, the German Historical Museum, the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Natural History Museum, the Humboldt Forum, the Berlin State Library, the Berlin State Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Marathon.

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.

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.

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.

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 Berlin Palace (German: Berliner Schloss), formally the Royal Palace (German: Königliches Schloss), on the Museum Island in the Mitte area of Berlin, was the main residence of the House of Hohenzollern from 1443 to 1918. Expanded by order of King Frederick I of Prussia according to plans by Andreas Schlüter from 1689 to 1713, it was thereafter considered a major work of Prussian Baroque architecture. The former royal palace was one of Berlin’s largest buildings and shaped the cityscape with its 60-meter-high (200 ft) dome. Used for various government functions after the fall of the monarchy in 1918, it was damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, and was demolished by the East German authorities in 1950. In the 1970s, it became the location of the modernist East German Palace of the Republic (the central government building of East Germany). After German reunification and several years of debate and discussion, particularly regarding the fraught historical legacy of both buildings, the Palace of the Republic was itself demolished in 2009 and the Berlin Palace was reconstructed beginning in 2013 to house the Humboldt Forum museum. The reconstruction was completed in 2020.

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.

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.

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