Discover Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg’s 2 best spots for your trip in Berlin

Once a walled-in, low-rent corner of West Berlin that attracted squatters, punks, and Turkish guest-worker families, Kreuzberg has kept much of that anti-establishment energy even as gentrification has crept in. The neighborhood splits into distinct characters: Kreuzberg 36 around Kottbusser Tor and the Landwehr Canal is grittier and more countercultural, with graffiti-covered facades, the Turkish market along Maybachufer, and late-night bars, while Kreuzberg 61 around Bergmannstraße is calmer and more gentrified.

It's also home to a stretch of the East Side Gallery and the Jewish Museum's striking Libeskind building. Few Berlin neighborhoods pack in as much street art, döner kebab shops, and genuinely mixed nightlife into one area.

Friedrichshain was part of East Berlin and still shows traces of GDR-era architecture along Karl-Marx-Allee's monumental Stalinist boulevard, but it's best known today as ground zero for Berlin's techno and club culture, anchored by Berghain, one of the world's most famous nightclubs, housed in a former power station. The longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, the East Side Gallery, runs along the Spree here, covered in murals painted by artists from around the world after 1990.

Boxhagener Platz is the neighborhood's social heart by day, with a lively flea market on Sundays and cafés filled with young Berliners and expats. It sits just across the river from Kreuzberg, and the two districts blend into one continuous, youthful nightlife zone.