A different face of Berlin – unknown attractions

Are you interested in alternative sites in Berlin? You know the German capital pretty well and now seek for ideas for a less obvious trip? You are not going to be disappointed. Unknown and peculiar attractions are at your fingertips.

You have certainly heard of the Oscar winning film The Lives of Others. However, it is not just a great creation by Florian von Donnersmarck, but also everyday life of residents of the former DDR. To see how the state interfered with the lives of its citizens and monitored their every step, visit the STASI Museum. The imposing edifice alone is uncannily impressive, and you will feel more and more entrapped by the state service with every floor of the exhibition you will see. Note that a housing estate was built near the Stasi headquarters for people employed by that powerful apparatus of surveillance and terror.

In order to overwhelm its citizens even more, the totalitarian state used also fitting architectural concepts. You can feel that in Karl-Marx-Allee, a wide and pompous street with architecture which had been brought from the Soviet Union on soldiers' bayonets. Everything is large and hostile there, designed to make you perceive yourself as a little cog in giant machinery. However, before Moscow engulfed East Berlin, Nazism had been born. Traces of the Third Reich include the Olympic stadium. Opened in 1936, it was the venue of the world's greatest sport event, but it was also used by the regime for propaganda purposes.

From there you can exit through the southern gate and via Couberteinplatz , and behind the large urban railway station you will see something which seems to be ugly, but in fact is very unique – a huge block of flats designed by "the pope" of modernism Le Corbusier and entered in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Peculiar and unknown attractions of Berlin include also excellent residential buildings erected under the Weimar Republic. And don't let the idea of sightseeing a housing estate confound you! Berlin has several UNESCO-listed estates, including the one in shape of a horseshoe in the southern outskirts of the Neukölln district. Just a single glance at its urban planning is enough to understand why it was given that name. At the centre of the rounded block of flats there is a green space filled with a pond. It is a perfect example of the comfortable housing created over 100 years ago.