Queen Sophie Charlotte, wife of King Friedrich I of Prussia, must have been quite a classy lady judging by the burg that bears her name. During the 19th century, this then city served as a weekend getaway for Berlin’s leisure class before eventually being consumed by Berlin’s westward expansion. After the war it held the distinction of being the sole West Berlin borough that didn’t rub up against any part of the unsightly Wall – a place where it was possible to forget the city’s precarious position on the geopolitical chessboard. Today, this haute bourgeois enclave (which has been lumped together with Wilmersdorf in the latest round of redistricting) is still the repository of Berlin’s old-school taste and refinement.

Almost all of Charlottenburg rests below the Spree and stretches from the Zoo Bahnhof northwest to the Havel River. It’s where you find fine jewellers, elegant restaurants, and the summer palace of the namesake queen herself, with its vast gardens and the surrounding complex of showpiece 18th century buildings. Further out, you can walk through the Olympiastadion and recall the day Hitler watched as Jesse Owens sprinted past his supposedly racially superior Aryan athletes, or visit the Plötzensee memorial to murdered victims of the Nazi ‘justice’ system.