Walking the Berlin Wall line in December

Bernauer Straße first

Start at Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer. Here the border strip survives at full depth on the ground. You walk a 70-metre stretch of it enclosed by steel walls, past original fortification traces, up to the watchtower on Ackerstraße. The Window of Remembrance names the civilians who died at the Wall. In the Chapel of Reconciliation, prayers for them are said at noon from Tuesday to Friday.

All of it is free, including the Documentation Centre and the Visitor Centre, which open from 10:00 to 18:00 Tuesday to Sunday. The last climb up the observation tower is at 17:45, so do that before you walk the strip if the sky is clear. Both centres close on 24, 25 and 31 December, and the Visitor Centre opens from 12:00 to 18:00 on 26 December. The grounds stay open on all those days.

Take the S-Bahn or tram M10 to Nordbahnhof, or the U8 to Bernauer Straße. The foundation's own guides cost €5 to €7 a head.

A tunnel under the border

Berliner Unterwelten takes you down to the only original escape tunnel under the Wall you can still see, reached through an access shaft dug by the association that runs the tour. It lasts 90 minutes and costs €18, or €13 reduced. All of it is underground, which makes it the thing to keep in your pocket for a wet December afternoon.

Tickets are online only. Nothing is sold at the meeting point, which is Brunnenstraße 141, at the U8 stop you used for the memorial. Wear closed shoes and a warm coat, as part of the route sits at about 10°C all year. Children under 7 are not admitted and the content is pitched at 14 and up.

The exit hall at Friedrichstraße

Tränenpalast is the low glass-and-steel pavilion beside the Spree at Friedrichstraße station, and it was the exit hall of the border crossing. The passport booths are still in place. The exhibition uses ordinary objects and the stories of individual travellers. It shows how people were processed at the border and how they left for the West. That is the half of the story the concrete cannot tell you.

Entry and the audio guide are free. It opens from 09:00 to 18:00 Tuesday to Friday and from 10:00 at weekends, and it is shut on Mondays. German-language public tours run at 15:00 on the first and third Saturday of the month, so 5 and 19 December this year.

Checkpoint Charlie and the balloon

Checkpoint Charlie is a white guard hut with sandbags and a flag sitting in the traffic on Friedrichstraße. It is a reconstruction, put up in 2000. Expect souvenir shops. The worthwhile part is free and one street over, on the corner of Schützenstraße and Zimmerstraße. It is an open-air exhibition about escape attempts, the ones that worked and the ones that did not. Stadtmitte and Kochstraße are the nearest U-Bahn stops.

Mauermuseum stands in the buildings beside the junction. It opens every day from 10:00 to 20:00, at €18.50 for adults and €12.50 for ages 7 to 18. It is crowded, dated and heavy on text. What it has that nobody else has is the hardware: a home-made hot-air balloon, an armoured getaway car, a one-man submarine driven by a bicycle motor. If you are watching what you spend, skip it, as three free sites tell the story better.

East Side Gallery in winter

East Side Gallery on Mühlenstraße is the long painted run of slabs everyone pictures, with the Spree and the brick towers of the Oberbaumbrücke behind it. It is free and open at any hour, which is useful when the light goes early. Know what you are looking at, though. This is the inner wall, painted after the fact, not the death strip.

Guided walks leave from the visitor information at Mühlenstraße 73, which opens daily from 10:00 to 17:00, and cost €5, or €7 for the longer ones. From November that office is closed on Fridays, and it shuts completely from 24 December to 2 January. Warschauer Straße is the station for it, on the U1, U3 and the S-Bahn.

Normannenstraße and Lichtenberg

Two Stasi sites survive in the east of the city and one is enough in a day. Stasimuseum sits in the former ministry headquarters, where Erich Mielke's office is preserved almost as he left it, down to the bank of bakelite telephones. Three floors cover how the service recruited, watched and then tried to burn its files. It costs €12, or €9 concession, and opens from 10:00 to 18:00 on weekdays and from 11:00 at weekends. The English tour runs at 15:00, Monday to Saturday. Take the U5 to Magdalenenstraße and leave by the Ruschestraße exit.

Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen in Lichtenberg is the remand prison, and it is harder going. The cells can only be seen on a guided tour, which costs €9, or €5 concession. It takes about an hour and a half, plus a film. English tours go daily at 10:40, 12:40 and 14:40, and your guide may be a former prisoner or a historian. The basement cells are windowless and padded. Leave small children out of it. Give it a free half-day and allow for the ride: tram M5 from Alexanderplatz to Freienwalder Straße, then about ten minutes on foot.

Karl-Marx-Allee and glögg

For East Berlin above ground and free, walk Karl-Marx-Allee. The wedding-cake section runs about two kilometres from Frankfurter Tor to Strausberger Platz, lined with cream tiled blocks, and information boards along it do the explaining. Allow 20 minutes at a steady pace, or 45 if you stop to look. The U5 has four stations along it, so you can drop out of the cold and rejoin further up.

In Prenzlauer Berg, Museum in der Kulturbrauerei shows everyday life in the GDR inside the old brewery halls. A bungalow caravan and a Simson moped sit under the roof trusses. It is free, opens 09:00 to 18:00 Tuesday to Friday and from 10:00 at weekends, and closes on Mondays. Renovation work is keeping parts of the permanent display shut until early December. The audio guide is online, so bring headphones and use your own phone.

The Lucia Weihnachtsmarkt fills the same cobbled courtyards from 23 November to 22 December, from 15:00 on weekdays and 13:00 at weekends, until 22:00. Entry is free and the theme is Nordic, so you get glögi and glögg, moose sausage and köttbullar, with fire pits and fur throws over the benches. It is gone before Christmas week.

Sunday beside Mauerpark

Flohmarkt im Mauerpark runs Sundays from 10:00 to 18:00 on Bernauer Straße. It is a walk along the old border line from the memorial, and the park itself is the former border strip. Stalls are mostly private sellers with vinyl, bicycles, clothes and toys, and there is food and coffee along the edge. Fewer traders bother in bad winter weather, so treat it as an add-on to the memorial.

Guide or no guide

You can do this walk on your own for almost nothing, and the free sites are the strong ones. What a guide buys you is the join between them, which is hard to see once the ground has been landscaped and the slabs carted off. A two-hour walk through East Berlin and along the Wall suits a first full day, before you go back to Bernauer Straße slowly and alone. Book it a few days ahead for the morning you want, as December daylight is short and afternoon walks finish in the dark.

Before you go

Mondays close Tränenpalast and the Kulturbrauerei museum, and 24, 25 and 31 December close the memorial centres on Bernauer Straße. Book the tunnel tour online in advance, remember that the prison can only be visited on a tour, and dress for standing still outdoors. See the Antwerp guide and the Antwerp hotel search.