Tiergarten

In the middle of the city, a great park of woods, lawns, and lakes spreads between the government quarter and the western districts, crossed by paths and ringed by landmarks. This is the Tiergarten, the green heart of Berlin, a vast central park that gives the busy capital room to breathe.

The park was once a royal hunting ground, its name recalling the game that was kept here, and over the centuries it was turned into a landscaped public park, a place for the whole city to walk and gather.

At its centre rises a tall victory column, topped by a golden figure, a nineteenth-century monument that you can climb for a view out over the trees and the surrounding city, a landmark visible from across the park.

The park was devastated in and after the war, its trees cut down for fuel in desperate winters, and then replanted, so the mature woodland you walk through today is, like much of the city, a careful recovery.

Paths wind through woods and across lawns, past lakes where people row in summer, monuments, gardens, and beer gardens, so the park mixes wild-feeling woodland with formal corners and places to sit and drink.

It sits right beside the great gate, the parliament, and the government quarter, so it is easy to combine a walk in the park with the city's central landmarks, the green and the monumental side by side.

In summer the park fills with locals walking, cycling, picnicking, and sunbathing, and some corners are well known as relaxed gathering spots, so it is a fine place to see the city at leisure.

Among the trees stand memorials and monuments of different eras, so a walk through the park is also a quiet passage through the layers of the city's history.

The park is free and open at all hours, vast enough to lose the crowds in, and a welcome contrast to the dense streets and heavy history of the central districts.

The victory column at the centre, reached by tunnels under the busy roundabout, rewards the climb up its spiral stair with one of the better views over the green expanse and the city beyond.

Walk into the woods until the traffic fades, climb the column for the view, and the green lung of the city opens around you. When you come back out by the great gate, the monuments and the park stand side by side, the two faces of central Berlin.