Berlin is celebrating its 775th birthday this year. The date goes back to the first documented mention of Berlin’s twin city Cölln on 28 October 1237¹. There’s going to be a big celebration on 28 October itself, with an official ceremony and church service, a medieval fair in the historic quarter, street theatre and a fire installation.
But Berlin has been celebrating since August with three exhibitions open air throughout the city. “Party, Pomp and Propaganda” outside the Marienkirche looks at the city’s previous birthday celebrations. “Traces of the Middle Ages” highlights eight places throughout the city that signify medieval Berlin, as well as marking out the city’s old four kilometre long boundaries with interesting snippets of information:
(Translation: End of the city! This is where the city wall took its course.)
And finally, “City of Diversity”, which I visited the other week, is a huge walkable map on the Schlossplatz in Berlin Mitte which presents the Berlin of today as well as its 800 years of immigration history. Keeping in with the theme of the birthday, the scale of the map is 1:775.
Colourful oversized pins highlight significant immigrant narratives throughout the city, and also make a very photogenic frame for some of Berlin’s iconic landmarks such as the cathedral and the TV tower.
It was also fun trying to find where we live on the map. We did find our street corner, but I didn’t photograph it because that would be giving too much away, so here’s another section of the map:
All of the open air exhibitions run until the grand finale on 28 October, so there’s two weeks left to go and see them. If you’re not anywhere near Berlin and can’t make it along, I hope you’ve enjoyed the photographs.
(1) Source: http://www.berlin.de/775/en/
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October 16, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Great photos, Jenni! I will be visiting Berlin in December, your post really makes me look forward to it! Maybe you can give me more tips which exhibitions to visit?
Susanne, your byw classmate
October 16, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Hi Susanne –
I get asked for Berlin museum recommendations a lot, so I wrote a blog post about it I can refer people to: My Top Berlin Museum Recommendations. There is also a new special exhibition opening at the Neues Museum on Museum Island on 7 December, all about the discovery of the famous Nefertiti bust, which promises to be good.
Thanks for visiting.
Best wishes, Jenni
October 18, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Oh great, thanks! I have never been there, so I’m pretty excited. I just saw that you visited the Demel Museum in Vienna – divine, isn’t it?
October 18, 2012 at 10:15 pm
Yes, and the best hot chocolate I have ever had!
October 19, 2012 at 7:45 am
That’s why we Austrians all have a muffin top :)
October 16, 2012 at 5:34 pm
Jenni, this is a lovely blog and very inspiring to learn more and to travel
I’m glad I found it!
Amalia from BYW
October 16, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Thank you so much, and thanks for visiting :-)