Off the path
Secret gardens: Berlin's green hideaways
Everyone knows the Tiergarten, and at weekends everyone knows it at the same time. But Berlin has smaller gardens that you reach down a flight of steps, disappear into behind a wall, or where you find tomatoes between old gravestones. We introduce seven of them here, all reachable by public transport and most of them free.
Always open Körnerpark, Biesdorf palace park; Schönhausen palace park until dusk
Set hours Comenius Garden 12:30 to 7:30 pm; cemeteries and Prinzessinnengarten from 8 am, closing between 4 and 8 pm depending on the month
Admission Gardens and parks free; only Schönhausen Palace costs 8 euros, 6 euros reduced
With a café Körnerpark (orangery), Prinzessinnengarten (April to October)
The classic
The Tiergarten on a Sunday
Big, beautiful and right in the center, but on sunny days full of joggers, cyclists and barbecue groups.
Kieznah tip
Körnerpark first, then the Comenius Garden
Two gardens in Neukölln, ten minutes' walk apart, with the Bohemian Village in between. A whole afternoon without crowds.
01 Körnerpark · Neukölln
about 8 minutes on foot from Neukölln station
From the street you see almost nothing; only at the steps does the view open up. The park lies several meters lower, in a former gravel pit that the businessman Franz Körner gave to the city on condition that the park bear his name. Flower beds and a neo-baroque orangery have earned it the local nickname "Sanssouci of Neukölln". The orangery houses a café and a district gallery, and for the fourth season of "Babylon Berlin" the film crew set up an ice rink on the square in front of it. The park is open around the clock and free. It already featured in our 12 places off the path, but it belongs on every list of Berlin gardens.
02 Comenius Garden in the Bohemian Village · Neukölln
about 7 minutes on foot from Karl-Marx-Straße U-Bahn, about 10 minutes from Körnerpark
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
In the 18th century, Bohemian religious refugees settled in Rixdorf, and their village around Richardstraße can still be recognized today. In the middle of it lies a garden that follows an idea: in the 17th century the philosopher and educator John Amos Comenius described a person's path through life in stages, and that is exactly how the garden is laid out, from a walnut tree for life before birth, through a pavilion for childhood, to a telescope, mirror and microscope for the academy. There is also a pond called "World Ocean" and a brook called "Source of Life". The garden opened in 1995. It is open daily from 12:30 to 7:30 pm, Richardstraße 35. More on the Bohemian Village in the Kiez atlas and in Ringbahn part 2.
03 Prinzessinnengarten in the cemetery · Neukölln
about 4 minutes on foot from Hermannstraße station
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
Prinzessinnengarten began in 2009 as a mobile vegetable garden on a vacant lot at Moritzplatz. Since 2020 the Prinzessinnengarten Kollektiv has been gardening on part of the Neuer St. Jacobi cemetery on Hermannstraße, 7.5 hectares between old burial fields, trees and raised beds. That sounds odd, yet it is one of the most peaceful places in the city. From April to October there is a café, plus tours, workshops and a farm shop. The garden opens at 8 am and closes between 4 and 8 pm depending on the month, at 6 pm in October; current times from the garden collective. The original site at Moritzplatz carries on as an inclusive community garden.
04 Cemeteries outside the Hallesches Tor · Kreuzberg
about 4 minutes on foot from Mehringdamm U-Bahn to the entrance at Mehringdamm 21
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
A few steps from the bustle on Mehringdamm, where the queue forms outside the snack bar, lies one of the quietest corners of Kreuzberg. The cemeteries go back to a paupers' burial ground from 1735 that lay outside the city gates at the time. Among those buried here are the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny Hensel, the writers E.T.A. Hoffmann and Adelbert von Chamisso, and the architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff. Wander the rows without a plan and you find ivy-covered tombs, benches and a great deal of quiet. Times from the Protestant Cemetery Association Berlin Stadtmitte (evfbs.de).
05 Dorotheenstadt Cemetery · Mitte
about 5 minutes on foot from Naturkundemuseum U-Bahn
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
Right in the middle of Mitte, behind Chausseestraße 126, the gravestones of Schinkel, Schadow, Fichte, Hegel, Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel stand close together. Brecht lived right next door in his last years, and his house on the edge of the cemetery is now a memorial and archive. The cemetery opens at 8 am and closes between 4 pm (December and January) and 8 pm (May to August) depending on the month. A good place for twenty quiet minutes between two museums. And if you then want a cemetery with a café: the Old St Matthew's Churchyard with the graves of the Brothers Grimm is in our 12 more places off the path.
06 Schönhausen palace park · Pankow
about 10 minutes on foot from the Grabbeallee/Pastor-Niemöller-Platz tram stop (M1)
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
Few people know the palace, and even fewer the park behind it. The garden was created over 300 years ago, Peter Joseph Lenné turned it into a landscape park between 1827 and 1829, and today it covers around 30 hectares. In 1949, when the GDR leadership used the palace as an official seat, a wall split the park into two areas, and that layout still shapes it today. The park is open daily until dusk and free. You can visit the palace, with rooms from the baroque and GDR eras, from April to October Tuesday to Sunday 10 am to 5:30 pm, and from November to March only at weekends and on public holidays 10 am to 4 pm, for 8 euros, 6 euros reduced. More on the palace's history in our 12 more places off the path.
07 Biesdorf palace park · Marzahn-Hellersdorf
about 9 minutes on foot from Biesdorf S-Bahn, about 10 minutes from Elsterwerdaer Platz U-Bahn
Directions in Google Maps · Official site
A palace in Marzahn-Hellersdorf? Yes, and a lovely one: a villa from 1868, designed by Heino Schmieden and later owned by the Siemens family. Wilhelm von Siemens had the park enlarged, laid out in the English style by the landscape architect Alfred Brodersen. The park is open at all times, the palace hosts changing exhibitions, and the display on the building's history is free to enter (palace Wednesday to Monday from 10 am, Fridays from noon, closed Tuesdays). The U5 gets you there in about 20 minutes from the city center, a trip hardly any visitor thinks of.
Good to know
In cemeteries: keep your voice down, no picnic blanket between the graves, and leave mourners out of your photos. At Prinzessinnengarten you are a guest in a community project; the beds belong to everyone and are not for harvesting. In autumn and winter the cemeteries and Prinzessinnengarten close early, as early as 4 pm in December. If you want more greenery with history, Natur-Park Südgelände on an old shunting yard is in our 12 more places off the path, and ideas for a day off are in Sunday in Berlin.