Charlottenburg is the baroque west — a royal palace with a copper dome, a garden laid out to be admired from the windows, and, across the road, two of Berlin's most pleasurable small museums. Three kilometres, a slow morning, the kind of walk that rewards dawdling.
Come in from Richard-Wagner-Platz and let the forecourt of Schloss Charlottenburg do its work — the long ochre front, the dome, the equestrian statue in the court. Begun in 1695 for Sophie Charlotte, it grew for two hundred years; you can tour the rooms, but the facade is free and may be enough.
Go through to the garden, where the formal parterre and carp pond give way to woodland. Follow the water north to the Belvedere teahouse, then loop back past the Mausoleum, a Doric temple of royal tombs lit blue through the glass.
Cross the road for the Sammlung Berggruen — Picasso and Klee at human scale — with the Bröhan-Museum alongside for Art Nouveau. Both shut Mondays. End down quiet Schloßstraße at Sophie-Charlotte-Platz.
