This is the other Kreuzberg — the villagey, residential half south of the canal, where the streets are cobbled and the loudest thing is the secondhand shops. It climbs, gently and then properly, to the hill the whole district is named after.
Start on Bergmannstraße and walk it west: cafés, record shops, the kind of junk you end up carrying home. Duck into the Marheineke Markthalle for lunch, then drop one block to Chamissoplatz — a cobbled Gründerzeit square with its gas lamps intact, the nineteenth century left almost completely alone. You don't have to detour for it, but you should.
Then the climb. Viktoriapark rises ahead, its artificial waterfall pouring down the north slope, and the path beside it lifts you to the Kreuzberg summit and Schinkel's iron monument — sixty metres, the best free view in the southern city. Come down the far side to Platz der Luftbrücke, the Airlift memorial and its three concrete prongs outside old Tempelhof, where the U6 takes you on.
