Hansaviertel & Moabit

So where does everybody live? To find out, head north of the Spree to Moabit. This previously marginal neighbourhood found itself on the map in May 2006 thanks to the grand opening of the gleaming new Hauptbahnhof, as the rail lines serving East and west Berlin were finally consolidated in one grand station. The exterior may strike you as generically European, but inside, the open atrium offering views to the multiple platform levels, fed by tracks coming from four directions, can inspire a bit of awe, particularly among railroad fetishists.

Most of the residential areas can be found north and west of here. Around Turmstrasse you’ll detect a decidedly middle-eastern flavour with many exotic-looking shops and an equal number of bargain-basement second-hand outlets. Nearby, on Huttenstrasse, you’ll come upon the mushroom facade of the AEG Turbine Factory, a turn-of-the-century forerunner to modern industrial design, built by architect Peter Behrens in 1909.

While Moabit does have the advantage of a surfeit of inexpensive pre-war housing, this doesn’t really hold true for the Hansaviertel, designed as a ‘city of the future,’ in 1957, and the west’s answer to Karl-Marx-Allee. Its proportions, like that of its eastern counterpart, tend to forget that humans require a landscape that matches their scale.

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