Discover Tempelhof-Schöneberg’s 2 best spots for your trip in Berlin

Tempelhof's defining feature is its former airport, a monumental Nazi-era terminal building and the site of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, which was decommissioned in 2008 and reopened as Tempelhofer Feld — a vast public park where the old runways are now used for cycling, kite-surfing, urban gardening, and picnicking. The surrounding neighborhood itself is a fairly ordinary, middle-class residential district with tree-lined streets and little in the way of conventional sights beyond the airfield.

It has a strong claim to being one of Berlin's most unusual green spaces precisely because of what it used to be, and Berliners voted in a 2014 referendum to keep it undeveloped rather than build housing on it. It borders Neukölln and Schöneberg, making it easy to combine with either district's nightlife or shopping.

Schöneberg has a layered history: it was a hub of 1920s Weimar-era queer nightlife, later the neighborhood where David Bowie and Iggy Pop lived and recorded in the late 1970s, and today it remains the center of Berlin's LGBTQ+ scene, particularly around Nollendorfplatz and Motzstraße. The Rathaus Schöneberg, its town hall, is where John F.

Kennedy delivered his famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech in 1963. Away from the nightlife strip, the neighborhood has a comfortable, residential, slightly bourgeois character with leafy squares like Winterfeldtplatz, home to one of Berlin's best twice-weekly markets.

It sits just southwest of the city center, easily combined with a day exploring western Berlin.