City West is what West Berlin built when the East had the old centre: a downtown around a ruined church, anchored by a boulevard and a department store. Three kilometres, and the through-line is a single object you can't stop looking at — the broken tower of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche.
Come out of Zoologischer Garten and the spire is already in front of you. The 1890s church was bombed almost to nothing in 1943 and deliberately never repaired; the stump stands beside Egon Eiermann's 1960s hall, and you should go into the new one — the blue-glass walls turn the whole room the colour of deep water, best in late afternoon. Outside is Breitscheidplatz and its globe fountain, the city carrying on at the foot of the wound.
West onto the Kurfürstendamm for the shopfronts and the lime trees, then double back east along Tauentzienstraße to the KaDeWe. Don't shop — ride to the sixth-floor food hall and eat standing at a counter. End next door at Wittenbergplatz, a 1913 station prettier than it needs to be.
