Berlin with kids

Berlin is a great city to visit with kids. You will find plenty to do whatever the weather. With hundreds of playgrounds, two zoos, two aquariums, leafy parks, lakes and great museums, your kids will not be bored! 

OUTDOORS

Playgrounds (in German Spielplatz or Spielplätze plural)

Berlin has hundreds of playgrounds scattered around the city.

If your child needs a break from sightseeing or shopping, you will not need to search long to find a playground. Type in Spielplatz into an online map service to find the one closest to you.

Spielplatz am Heinrich-Lassen-Park

Some of the best playgrounds in Berlin are

Hirschhof Spielplatz (Prenzlauer Berg) – close to the Mauerpark.

Spielplatz am Wasserturm (Prenzlauer Berg) – it’s very close to Kollwitzplatz; green and child-friendly neighbourhood with lots of nice cafes.

Spielplatz am Kollwitzplatz (Prenzlauer Berg) – visit the market on a Thursday afternoon or on a Saturday.

Blauer Spielplatz (Mitte) – inside the Weinsberg Park, where you can get a bite to eat of a proper meal at the cafe/restaurant in the middle of the park.

Spielplatz am Monbijoupark (Mitte) – close to Museum Island.

Tiergarten – there are several playgrounds at different ends of the park; you could combine it with a visit to the Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, the Zoo or the Aquarium.

Volkspark Friedrichshain (Prenzlauer Berg/Friedrichshain) – there are three playgrounds; this park gets very busy at the weekend.

Gleisdreieck Park (Kreuzberg) head to the Museum of Technology first and the stop off for lunch or dinner at the Brlo Brewery.

Spielplatz am Heinrich-Lassen-Park (Schöneberg) – brand-new playground with a castle. It’s right next to a swimming pool with a small outdoor pool and close to Volkspark Schöneberg-Wilmersdorf. It’s only a short walk from Rathaus Schoeneberg, where John F. Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner speech”. Meanwhile, David Bowie fans might like to head to Hauptstraße 155, where the great artist lived between 1976 and 1978. There is a memorial plaque outside the building.

On a hot day, look for a Wasserspielplatz, a playground with water.

Swimming pools and lakes 

Some of the best outdoor pools (in German Freibad or Sommerbad) and lakes are

Kinderbad Monbijou (Mitte) – best for small children.

Sommerbad Pankow (Pankow) – good for all ages: there is a paddling pool for the little ones, a swimming pool for older ones and a leisure pool with slides and diving boards; it can get very crowded on a hot day and at the weekends, but there’s plenty of space on the lawn. 

Freibad Orankesee

Strandbad Weissensee (Weissensee) – good for swimming, sunbathing, having a drink and hanging out with the locals.

Freibad Orankesee (Hohenschönhausen) – good for swimming, sunbathing and avoiding tourists. There is a spacious and shady Biergarten nearby.  

Schlachtensee (Zehlendorf) – beautiful lake surrounded by trees located in the posh area of Berlin. There is a large beer garden and adjacent playground. It gets crowded at the weekends, especially close to the S-Bahn station.

Parks

Tiergarten – the city’s green lung. There are plenty of paths and hidden treasures to discover, as well as two nice beer gardens where you can stop off for lunch or a drink: Café am Neuen See and Schleusenkrug.

Volkspark Friedrichshain – large park with playgrounds, cafes and a beer garden but gets very crowded with local Berliners at the weekends.

Gleisdreieck – former wasteland converted into a park. I’ve written about it in the past.

Tempelhof – the old airport runway has been transformed into a huge park; very popular with the locals. Read my previous entry.

Mauerpark – get there early on a Sunday to avoid the crowds and visit the flee market; the karaoke starts at 3pm and will keep your older kids entertained. I’ve also written about this in the past.

Schloss Charlottenburg – visit the castle and/or walk, play, run in the grounds. 

INDOORS

Labyrinth Kindermuseum

Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum)

Don’t miss the dinosaurs! Tristan Otto is the only original skeleton of a T. Rex in Europe to date.

Deutsches Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology)

The museum has a huge collection of steam engines and is also a great place for plane and boat lovers. Don’t miss the Rosinenbomber on the top terrace!

Spectrum Science Centre

The Science Centre makes science fun for children. It is just across from the Museum of Technology and tickets are valid for same-day visits to both the museum and Spectrum.

Labyrinth Kindermuseum (Wedding) – the former factory has been converted into a spacious children’s museum, with a special focus on diversity. There are different areas and lots of things to discover and to play with. Aspiring chefs will love the large kitchen area.

Kindermuseum MachMit (Prenzlauer Berg) – housed in a former church, the large museum offers endless opportunities for playing, climbing and learning through play. There is also a cinema. The current exhibition, which has been extended to June 2019, focuses on Native American culture.

Legoland – housed in a basement on Potsdamer Platz, it’s noisy and expensive, with only artificial light. Parents hate it, but kids love it. Best to avoid at the weekend.

Zoo – it’s one of Berlin’s most popular attractions both with adults and children so it gets very busy, especially at the weekends.

Tierpark – not to be confused with the Tiergarten. The Tierpark is Europe’s biggest animal park and is in the Eastern part of Berlin.

Aquarium – the entrance is next to the Zoo. It’s a good place for the little ones and for fish and/or reptile lovers. Don’t miss the sharks! You can get a combined ticket for the zoo and the aquarium.

Sealife – it’s smaller and narrower than the aquarium. The best part is the lift that takes you into the AquaDom at the end: the massive aquarium inside the Radisson Blu Hotel lobby. It’s cheaper if you buy tickets online.

Berlin boat trip – the one-hour boat trip along the Spree is probably the best option for smaller kids. They tend to get bored after a while!

Wandelism: old garage turned into street art exhibition

Remember The Haus? Well this year it's not a house, it's a garage and it's about to be torn down. For two weeks only (initially one week), an old car repair garage has been taken over by 90 local and international street artists and transformed into an urban art gallery. 

The title of the exhibition, Wandelism, is a play on the words Wandel (which means change in German) and vandalism. The aim is to show that Berlin is still colourful and wild. In a city that is slowly becoming too expensive for artists, Berlin's artists need to find their own spaces. 

Spread over 2000 square metres, 15 rooms, 2 halls and a basement, the art-work is certainly very colourful and varied. Just don't forget to look inside the toilets!

A feast for the eyes: if you enjoy photography head for City West

Helmut Newton Foundation

For many tourists and Berliners alike, the area next to Zoo Station is most readily associated with the eponymous zoo, the aquarium, the Bikini shopping mall and the Gedächtniskirche (or Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church if you prefer). However, over the past three years this has become Berlin’s temple of photography. In 2014, the C/O Berlin gallery moved from its location in Mitte to Amerika Haus, on Hardenbergstraße, just around the corner from Jebensstraße, the location of the Museum of Photography. The latter houses the Kunstbibliothek’s Collection of Photography and the Helmut Newton Foundation. In December, these venues opened their doors to two exhibitions showcasing vintage prints from the pre-digital and pre-Photoshop era of the 1960s and 1970s. While Joel Meyerowitz was a pioneer of colour photography, Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton broke the conventions of fashion photography.

Fashion Revolution

The exhibition showcased by the Helmut Newton Foundation is called Guy Bourdin. Image Maker / Helmut Newton. A Gun For Hire / Angelo Marino. Another Story. For the first time ever, the iconic images of the two revolutionary fashion photographers, Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, are presented side by side. Bourdin and Newton were the star photographers of French Vogue and worked for the most prestigious fashion houses. With their provocative and ironic images, they transformed fashion photography in the 1960s and 1970s. In the words of Shelly Verthime, curator of the Guy Bourdin Estate: “For the first time it was about the image – it was beyond the fashion”. The advertising images for Charles Jourdan shoes are particularly intriguing. Finally, the snap-shot images recently taken by Newton’s former assistant, Angelo Marino on an iPhone, should be seen as complementary to the exhibition and present a view on contemporary photography. 

Colour revolution

Joel Meyerowitz

The exhibition featured by C/O Berlin from December 2017 until March 2018 was dedicated to legendary street photographer Joel Meyerowitz. In the 1960s, when artistic photography was exclusively conceived in black and white, Meyerowitz was one of the first photographers to recognise the power of colour. At the press tour of the Joel Meyerowitz . Why Color? Retrospective, the photographer explained: “Colour added content and a richness of detail to an image that could not be found in a black and white photograph”. The C/O exhibition is focussed primarily on the vintage prints in black and white and colour from the 1960s and 1970s, leading up to the present day. Starting from scenes of New York street life, the exhibition included pictures from the European car journey, which Meyerowitz defines as the time he “came of age” and the Cape Cod studies on light. As the only photographer to be granted access to Ground Zero, the pictures of the aftermath of 9/11 are particularly striking. The exhibition ends with a series of portraits and Still Lifes, Meyerowitz’s latest endeavour. In case you missed the Berlin retrospective, the autobiographical photography book Joel Meyerowitz: Where I Find Myself has just been released.