Alexanderplatz

Named after Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who visited Berlin in 1805, 'Alex' was the beating heart of East Berlin and remains one of the city's most recognisable public spaces. Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' made it famous in literature before the Nazis, the war, and the GDR transformed it beyond recognition.

The square was completely redesigned in the 1960s as a showcase of socialist urban planning. Everything is big — the buildings, the open spaces, the wind. The Park Inn hotel stands 125 metres tall and offers base jumping from its roof, which says something about the kind of city Berlin is.

The Weltzeituhr — the World Time Clock — is the square's most beloved feature. Designed by Erich John and installed in 1969, it's a rotating cylinder showing the time in cities across all 24 time zones, topped by a simplified model of the solar system. It was meant to demonstrate the GDR's international outlook. Today it's the most popular meeting point in eastern Berlin and one of the most photographed objects in the city.

The Fountain of Friendship among Peoples ('Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft') is another GDR relic — a copper fountain with 17 basins and glass mosaic elements that looks like communist-era public art at its most ambitious. It was restored in 2018 and works beautifully, though the friendship among peoples it celebrates didn't survive the state that commissioned it.