Potsdamer Platz: the rebuilt centre and the modern museums
The square the Wall erased and the Nineties rebuilt, then Scharoun's gold hall and Mies's glass box. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Potsdamer Platz
Start where there was nothing. This was the busiest square in pre-war Europe, then a dead strip in the Wall's death zone, then the Nineties' biggest building site. Look for the replica of Europe's first traffic light, the 1924 tower that once tried to tame the chaos here.

2. Berlin Wall slabs
A short line of original, painted Wall segments stands on the square, exactly where the real thing ran. Stand on the brick line set into the pavement that traces the Wall's whole course through the city. The death strip ran right under your feet.

3. Sony Center
Helmut Jahn's glass forum under a tent roof that fans out like a spoke wheel — the building everyone photographs looking straight up. Walk into the courtyard and do exactly that. A surviving fragment of the old Hotel Esplanade is preserved inside, slid into place on air cushions.

4. Berliner Philharmonie
Hans Scharoun's 1963 concert hall, gold-clad and tent-tented, with the orchestra in the round at its heart — the building that taught the world a concert hall could look like this. You can't always go in, but the exterior is the lesson. The Staatsbibliothek next door is Scharoun too.

5. Neue Nationalgalerie
Mies van der Rohe's last building: a black-steel temple of modern art, all glass and a single floating roof. Recently restored by David Chipperfield. Even from outside it's a tutorial; inside, the 20th-century collection. Check the day before you bank on entry.

6. Gemäldegalerie
The old-master gallery — Vermeer, Rembrandt, Bruegel, Cranach, room after quiet room of them. The least flashy building on the *Kulturforum* and, on a rainy afternoon, the best room in Berlin. End here; the buses on the square take you out.

Potsdamer Platz: the rebuilt centre and the modern museums