Köpenick: the old town on the water
A cobbled river-town where two rivers meet, a baroque island palace, and the captain who fooled an empire. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Rathaus Köpenick
Start at the red-brick town hall, because of what happened here in 1906: a cobbler in a borrowed officer's uniform marched in a squad of soldiers, arrested the mayor, and made off with the treasury. The *Hauptmann von Köpenick* — the Captain of Köpenick — became the city's favourite story about Prussia and its weakness for a uniform.

2. Alt-Köpenick (the Altstadt)
The *Altstadt* (old town) is small, cobbled, and walkable in twenty unhurried minutes. Low houses, a church on the square, the feel of a river-town that Berlin happened to grow around rather than over. Wander rather than route-march.

3. Schloss Köpenick
The baroque *Schloss* sits on its own island in the Dahme, a 17th-century Hohenzollern water-palace now holding the decorative-arts collection — furniture, silver, panelled rooms. Even shut, walk the island bridge and the gardens for the water on three sides.

4. Kietz
The old fishermen's lane, a single row of low cottages along the water — one of the oldest surviving corners of Köpenick. Slow down here. It's the village before the village, and almost nobody walks down it.

5. Confluence of the Spree and Dahme
Where the two rivers meet — the reason the town exists. Boats, a jetty or two, the wide flat water that made this a trading post long before it was a Berlin postcode. A bench here is the right place to sit.

6. Müggelsee shore path
Follow the Dahme east toward where it opens into the *Müggelsee*, Berlin's biggest lake. You don't have to reach the open water; the riverside path on the way is the walk. Turn back to the tram and the S-Bahn when you've had your fill.

Köpenick: the old town on the water