Rixdorf: the Bohemian village and the sunken garden
A 1737 Protestant refugee village, a working smithy, and a neo-baroque garden hidden below street level. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Karl-Marx-Straße (U7)
Start on the busy shopping spine; the village is hidden just behind it. Walk east a few minutes and the noise drops away as the cobbles begin.

2. Richardplatz
The village square — cobbles, the old smithy still ringing some days, a horse trough, the Bethlehemskirche. Stand here and forget you're in a city of four million. This is *Rixdorf*, older than the borough around it.

3. Böhmisches Dorf
The Bohemian village streets — Kirchgasse, the low refugee houses built for Protestants who fled here in 1737. Walk slowly; the scale is the point. You can knock on the cemetery gate behind the Brethren church.

4. Comenius-Garten
A small philosophical garden behind the village, laid out around the ideas of the Czech educator Comenius. Quiet, walled, almost always empty. Go in even if the gate looks private — it isn't.

5. Körnerpark
The surprise of the walk: a sunken neo-baroque garden in a former gravel pit, a full storey below the street. Fountains, an orangery with a café, terraces of bedding plants. You don't see it until you're on top of it.

6. Neukölln (S/U)
Out of the garden, a few minutes to the Ring-Bahn and U7 interchange. The walk has taken you from a 1737 village to a hidden baroque garden without ever feeling like a tour.

Rixdorf: the Bohemian village and the sunken garden