Explore the urban counterculture of Friedrichshain, once divided by the Berlin Wall, the former East Berlin is now famous for its political art and subversive counterculture.
Friedrichshain is one of Berlin’s most eclectic and interesting neighborhoods, steeped in historic political art, creative self-expression and punky rebel music. On your private tour, you will see contemporary and underground art galleries, urban sculpture, and guerilla gardens and soak up the neighborhood’s alternative, Bohemian vibe. A subterranean world of tunnels, storage rooms, air-raid shelters and deserted subway stations once smuggled people from East to West. Today entire buildings cloaked in protest murals and rebel-rousing graffiti draw visitors to an artsy counterculture scene where the past lives on in clandestine kitsch cafés, funky bars and slogan-painted techno clubs in disused former Eastern Bloc warehouses.
This immersive tour of the counterculture in East Berlin takes you beyond the typical tourist sites to discover more than Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie, into the city’s lesser-known treasure troves of Cold War subterfuge and dissent. On the banks of the Spree River, Friedrichshain’s art installations include everything from concrete mixers and barbed wire to 1960s newsreels. Stroll Boxhagener Platz and Revaler Strasse to see Soviet-era buildings, GDR-era relics, the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, and the East Side Gallery. Experience the artsy Friedrichshain district with its diverse subcultures and storied past.