Unter den Linden: the gate and the grand boulevard
From the Brandenburg Gate down the linden avenue, past the stelae, the burned library, and Kollwitz's Pietà. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Brandenburger Tor and Pariser Platz
Start with your back to the gate, facing east down the boulevard, so the whole walk lies ahead of you. The square was no-man's-land until 1989; now it's embassies and the quadriga overhead. Come early, before the tour groups.

2. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Two minutes south of the gate. Walk into the field of 2,711 concrete stelae rather than around it — the ground dips, the blocks rise over your head, and the noise of the city drops away. The underground information centre is free and devastating.

3. Bebelplatz — the empty-library memorial
Find the glass plate set into the cobbles and look down: a room of empty white shelves, Micha Ullman's memorial to the 1933 book burning that happened on this square. Easy to walk over without noticing, which is the point.

4. Humboldt-Universität
Across Unter den Linden from Bebelplatz. The second-hand book tables out front have run for decades; browse them even if your German is nonexistent. Marx and the Brothers Grimm taught here; twenty-nine Nobel laureates passed through.

5. Neue Wache (Kollwitz's Pietà)
Step inside the bare stone room. A single sculpture — Käthe Kollwitz's mother cradling her dead son — sits under an open oculus, exposed to the rain and snow. Germany's central memorial to the victims of war and tyranny. Stay a minute longer than feels comfortable.

6. The Lustgarten
The boulevard delivers you to the lawn in front of the Berliner Dom, the threshold of Museum Island. A good place to sit before the day turns into a museum day. The U5 at Museumsinsel takes you on from here.

Unter den Linden: the gate and the grand boulevard