Potsdamer Platz Audio Guide

Potsdamer Platz: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Potsdamer Platz

   Welcome to Potsdamer Platz, one of the most famous squares in Berlin. Stand here for a moment and take in the glass, steel and skyscrapers around you. It is easy to assume the district has always looked like this. It has not. This is a place that has been reinvented again and again, and almost nothing you see is old. Today it is a bustling commercial and cultural hub, with offices, shops, restaurants, cinemas and hotels. Every day it draws around 110,000 visitors from Berlin, from the rest of Germany and from abroad. Yet beneath all that polish lies one of the most dramatic stories in the city: a quiet crossroads that became a transport hub, then a ruin, then a strip of empty land, then the biggest building site on the continent. Over the next few stops, we will walk through those layers. We will start with the garden that once stood here and the railway that changed everything. Then we will go through the glittering and the dark chapters of the twentieth century. Finally, we will look at the district that grew after reunification, and at what is still being planned for its future.

2. 02

   From Garden Square to Railway Hub

   Picture this place without traffic. Originally Potsdamer Platz was little more than a road junction on the edge of the royal residence, set in front of the baroque Leipziger Platz. In the 1830s, instead of honking cars and hurrying pedestrians, there was a green space here designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was known as the Platz vor dem Potsdamer Thor, the square in front of the Potsdam Gate. Then, in 1838, the area suddenly woke up. A new long-distance railway station opened, and it catapulted this quiet suburban corner into the center of Berlin. Within a few decades the junction had become one of the most important transportation hubs in Europe. By 1890, more than 1.4 million passengers boarded trains here every year, far more than at the other Berlin stations. Where travelers go, business follows. Restaurants, pubs and cafés opened by the hundreds around the station, along with hotels and cultural venues. A growing population and a surge in tourism fed the boom. In just a few generations, a calm edge of town had turned into the beating heart of a world city.

3. 03

   Glamour, Ruin and the Wall

   By the early twentieth century, Potsdamer Platz was a place to see and be seen. Luxury hotels such as the Esplanade drew wealthy guests. Bankers, businessmen and artists settled nearby, and the streets turned into promenades. After the First World War, Berlin reinvented itself almost like an amusement park. While economic crisis loomed on the horizon, Berliners wanted to forget the past and not think about tomorrow. The city's planners thought big. Berlin's chief planner, Martin Wagner, expected the entire center to be made over completely as often as every 25 years. That attitude produced radical, futuristic proposals for Potsdamer Platz in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with the most creative fervor around 1928 and 1929. Then came catastrophe. In the Second World War, four fifths of the buildings here were destroyed. Afterward the square lay at the meeting point of the American, British and Soviet sectors of Berlin. When the Berlin Wall divided the city, it cut straight through this area. The former crossroads of Europe was left desolate. It became one of the widest stretches of the Wall's death strip, a silent clearing in the middle of the capital.

4. 04

   Rebirth After Reunification

   The fall of the Wall in 1989 was the rebirth of Potsdamer Platz. Following German reunification in 1990, the empty land became the largest construction site on the continent. Because the square straddled the old border between east and west, it was seen as a linking element, a place that could reconnect the two halves of the city in a way that was symbolic as well as physical. The Berlin Senate organized a design competition for the redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz and much of the surrounding area. It attracted 17 entrants, and in October 1991 the winning design was announced, from the Munich-based architectural firm Hilmer and Sattler. Redevelopment then continued throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Look up and you will see the results. The Kollhoff Tower and the DB Tower rise into Berlin's skyline, while the futuristic Sony Center, now called the Center am Potsdamer Platz, makes its own bold statement. Visitors can head up to the viewing platform in the Kollhoff Tower, on the twenty-fifth floor, for a sweeping view over Berlin. There, the open-air exhibition Berliner Blicke, meaning Berlin Views, shows the transformation of the square in pictures. You can compare the old course of the Wall with the district below.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Potsdamer Platz is not a finished story. The square continues to reinvent itself. Companies and start-ups from all over the world work in its high-rises on visions for tomorrow. By 2028 the area is set to become even greener, with lush planting and more space for cyclists and pedestrians. In a way, that brings the place full circle, back to the green space Schinkel once designed here. Culture is part of the picture too. Since 2000 the square has been the main venue of the Berlinale, the Berlin film festival. Just beside it, the Kulturforum am Tiergarten gathers museums, libraries and concert halls. There you can hear classical music at the Philharmonie, or see the Neue Nationalgalerie, the iconic glass building by Mies van der Rohe. Before you move on, look around for the information boards and memorials that recall the square's past. Then try to match what you see with the layers we have uncovered: the garden, the railway, the glamour, the Wall and the glass towers. Each one is still here, if you know where to look.