Last Updated on October 4, 2026

Victory Column Views, Shopping and ‘Cabaret’

Berlin’s Tiergarten’s main avenue has the Brandenburg Gate at one end and the Siegessäule Victory Column at the other. It is not unlike The Mall in London; although the dense woodland of the Tiergarten is more like a forest than a park. 

On our second day walking in Berlin, we covered around six miles although we cheated slightly with buses across the Tiergarten. We used the vantage point of the Victory Column to pick out places we would see later, as well as the TV Tower which we’d visited in my earlier post, One Day In Berlin.

Although we used public transport to speed up some sections, this one day itinerary is do-able on foot if you start early and other than our evening show, places we visited were free or very low cost.

Brandenburg Gate

We started our day at Brandenburg Gate. Familiar from 1989’s news footage of East Germans celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s hard to imagine that during the Cold War, this triumphant arch was marooned in no-man’s land behind barbed wire.

Pariser Platz offers an unimpeded front view of Brandenburg Gate’s sculpture. The Quadriga statue has undergone various changes including theft by Napoleon and World War 2 Allied bomb damage. The replica of the 18th-century original, up since 1958, now includes the Iron Cross and Prussian eagle, restored after German reunification.  

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

A few minutes’ walk south, on a site that was part of the heavily guarded Cold War ‘death strip’, now lies the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Covering nearly five acres, it contains 2,711 concrete blocks, or stelae, in a grid pattern.

Walking through the sloping alleys is compelling; the stelae are blank but their varying heights and shadows means the memorial looks different from every angle.

An underground museum, called the Place of Information, is under the south-eastern corner. We didn’t see this, but it presents sobering statistics about the Holocaust in a series of rooms.

The Victory Column

We took a bus from Pariser Platz, through Tiergarten, to the Victory Column. By the time we’d waited for it, and snaked past the Reichstag, we wish we’d walked. You reach the Victory Column via subways under the busy roundabout. Entry tickets included a display of scale models comparing various other German and world monuments. 

Outside, one level up, you reach a round hall with colourful glass mosaics celebrating the founding of the German Empire but the view from 285 steps’ climb up is more likely why you’ll come. From the caged viewing platform, you can nearly touch the Winged Victory statue – and imagine you’re one of the angels in Wim Wenders’ Berlin film, Wings of Desire which featured scenes set up here.

The Tiergarten is so large that the immediate view is trees in every direction, but we enjoyed the panorama of Berlin’s skyline beyond. If you have binoculars these could be useful – there were no telescopes to use.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church

After picnicking on pretzels in the Tiergarten, we took another short bus ride towards Bahnhof Zoo getting off near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. 

A post-war landmark of western Berlin, the ruined 19th century church tower, damaged during the Second World War, and was nicknamed ‘the hollow tooth’ by Berliners. The new church built around it was reconsecrated in 1961, comprising concrete, steel and glass buildings around the tower and surviving parts of the old church.

We sat a few minutes in modern church, admiring the walls of blue glass and gold crucifix. Classical concerts are held here and the memorial hall next door had a Cross of Nails gifted by Coventry Cathedral, itself similarly bomb-damaged during WW2.  

Shopping in Ku’damm

We now walked towards Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s most famous shopping street, colloquially known as Ku’damm. With many luxury concessions, KaDeWe (short for Kaufhaus des Westens, or ‘Department Store of the West’) is Berlin’s answer to Selfridges.

Although my teenager had no interest in shopping, we rode the mirrored lifts to KaDeWe’s food hall on the top floor. It is filled with counters selling artisan chocolates, patisserie – or should I say Konditorei – and other gourmet gifts.

Schöneberg and Nollendorfplatz

Walking south, we wandered across Schöneberg district, past 19th century apartment buildings until Viktoria-Luise-Platz. This pretty hexagonal park with a fountain is enclosed by Jugendstil German Art Nouveau buildings and cafes. In the 1920s, both director Billy Wilder and writer Vladimir Nabokov lived nearby. 

Walking north east from there, Motzstraße crosses Berlin’s LGBTQ+ neighbourhood. During the 1920s, dozens of gay and lesbian venues clustered here, including the real ‘Cabaret’ Kit Kat Club as depicted in Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories (he lived nearby in Nollendorfstraße). That the original El Dorado venue at 24 Motzstraße, where Marlene Dietrich performed, is now an organic supermarket, signals how the neighbourhood has evolved, although the name lives on nearby.

After National Socialism suppressed Berlin’s queer nightlife, the gay-friendly Weimar Republic spirit endured in West Berlin’s Cold War years. The area around Nollendorfplatz became a centre for Berlin’s LGBTQ+ community. Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station has a pink triangle memorial dedicated to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime. 

A few steps from here, we managed to walk straight past Urban Nation, an indoor street-art museum, and the twice-weekly market at Winterfeldtplatz was sweeping up – but it was nice to explore somewhere less touristy, where Berliners really lived. 

We hoped to walk as far as David Bowie’s former apartment at Hauptstraße 155. Living here in the 1970s, he regularly visited the adjacent Neues Ufer Café Bar (then called Anderes Ufer). We got close but needed to stay on schedule for our evening – and my teenager’s tummy was grumbling.

Boarding the U-Bahn at Eisenacher Straße, we passed through Kleistpark station, which would have been Bowie’s local station. There’s a small mural outside his old flat, although we had to satisfy ourselves admiring Bowie trinkets in shop window. We did however, see Hansa Studios, where he recorded his Berlin Trilogy albums, near Potzdamer Platz, on a subsequent day. 

Dinner at Block House

After a brief hotel rest, we ate at steak restaurant Block House, opposite Friedrichstraße Bahnhof. Similar in atmosphere to UK chain Beefeater, they’re a well-known German restaurant with over 40 branches. Friendly staff fed us quickly when we said we were going to the theatre, it was good value with main courses costing under 20 euros. 

We both enjoyed beefy dishes, Ted had a burger and I had stewed beef with mushrooms and German spätzle noodles. We could have walked to our show back at the Tiergarten, but for peace of mind, we took the U-Bahn to Bundestag station and walked past the Reichstag German Parliament building. 

Our trip being short notice, we’d not booked a visit to the Norman Foster-designed glass dome above the Reichstag. To visit, book online at least a couple of weeks ahead; our next opportunity would have been ten days later. It’s free, but you need to register with ID information. We could see people on the spiral walkway inside – definitely somewhere we’d go next time. 

‘Cabaret’ at Tipi am Kanzleramt

Instead, we had musical entertainment. A production of Cabaret, running during summer and early autumn months, has been a signature show at the Tipi am Kanzleramt big top tent most years since 2004. It’s an immersive show with live band that transports you back to a 1930s Weimar-era club. 

The dramatic story differed only slightly from the Liza Minnelli film: here Sally Bowles’s landlady and her Jewish greengrocer were the love subplot and there was no youth group singing ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’. Instead the song was sung by supporting characters slipping into National Socialism’s grasp. 

You can order dinner to eat before or during the performance (no table service during the show). We enjoyed drinks outside overlooking the German Chancellery – it’s a modern building quite different to Number 10 Downing Street. From our seats inside the tent, we ordered ice creams for the interval. 

The ensemble cast were excellent, some songs were in English and, although the dialogue wasn’t, it’s visual enough for non-German speakers to follow. Compared to London, it was fantastic value with tickets starting at 25 euros we seemed to get better seats than the mid-price ones we’d paid for. 

Our second day walking in Berlin was even busier than the first – when we’d taken a river cruise and been up the TV tower. On day three we would visit Checkpoint Charlie, several small museums and Potzdamer Platz. Three days in Berlin was not going to be enough!

Fact Box

We booked our own accommodation, travel and experiences using Lastminute.com, Flixbus, Ryanair and Get Your Guide. More details in my earlier post One Day in Berlin.

The Place of Information display underneath the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe is on the corner of Cora-Berliner-Straße and Hannah-Arendt-Straße. The display is only open in daytime (not Mondays), although the stelae field can be explored at anytime. Entry free.

The Victory Column is at Große Stern 1, on the roundabout at the end of Straße des 17 Juni in the Tiergarten. Open daily, entry is 4.50 euros and by cash only.

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is on Breitsheidplatz close to Berlin Zoo and The Europa Center shopping complex. Entry is free, as are organ concerts, although visiting orchestras’ concerts are charged.

Urban Nation (closed Mondays), the indoor street-art museum, is generally free although groups larger than eight people need to pre-book and may be charged.

The Winterfeldplatz market is held from 8am on Wednesdays and Saturdays. A monthly fleamarket is held on Sundays.

David Bowie’s former apartment is at Hauptstraße 155, close to Kleistpark U-Bahn station.

The ‘Cabaret’ show at Tipi am Kanzleramt is returning in June-September 2027. Other productions are shown throughout the rest of the year. Pre-booking is required for the dinner menu which consists of starter and main before the show with dessert during the interval. Book direct on their website – although we booked with Get Your Guide.

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