Kurfürstendamm

It all began as a bridle path. Around 1542 Elector Joachim II had a causeway laid across marshy ground so he could ride more comfortably from the Berlin City Palace to his Grunewald hunting lodge. That "Elector's causeway" became the Kurfürstendamm, known to Berliners simply as the Ku'damm. The boulevard runs for about 3.5 km from Breitscheidplatz and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church west to Rathenauplatz, and for many people it is still the face of old West Berlin.

History: Bismarck's grand boulevard

The idea came from Otto von Bismarck, who in 1873 proposed a showpiece street on the French model and insisted it be 53 metres wide instead of 25. The steam tram from Zoologischer Garten to Halensee opened on 5 May 1886, the boulevard's official birthday. By the First World War it had become a hub of shopping, theatre and nightlife, and in the Golden Twenties it stood for modern Berlin, with cafés, bars and many studios of Jewish photographers. The Nazi era destroyed that world, with antisemitic riots here in 1931 and 1935. After the war West Berlin rebuilt the Ku'damm as its "shop window of the West". Student leader Rudi Dutschke was shot here in 1968, and on the night of 9 November 1989 East Berliners poured onto the Ku'damm after the Wall fell.

What to see

• Kranzler-Eck: Café Kranzler, a low 1950s building, in front of a glass tower by Helmut Jahn.
• Traffic pulpit: A glass booth on a 4.5-metre pillar from which police switched the traffic lights by hand in the 1950s; listed since its retirement in 1962.
• Haus Cumberland: A restored building from 1911 between Bleibtreustraße and Schlüterstraße.
• Theatres: The Komödie and Theater am Kurfürstendamm, and the Schaubühne at Lehniner Platz.
• Luxury stretch: Flagship stores and jewellers between Joachimsthaler Straße and Olivaer Platz.
• The Story of Berlin: A city history museum with a 1970s nuclear bunker.

Good to know

House numbers 1 to 9 are missing: they disappeared in 1925 when the easternmost section was renamed Budapester Straße. Numbers 77 to 89 never existed, because Lehniner Platz took their place.

Getting there

U-Bahn stations Kurfürstendamm, Uhlandstraße and Adenauerplatz are on the boulevard, and Zoologischer Garten station is next to Breitscheidplatz. Bus 100 to Alexanderplatz makes a cheap sightseeing ride.

Tripto tip

Walk from east to west, starting at the Memorial Church with a detour into Fasanenstraße, and allow two to three hours including a coffee break.