Soviet Heritage in Berlin Half-Day Guided Tour

We meet at the meeting point to discover together the Soviet Memorial in Berlin Schönholzer Heide. The Schönholzer Heid Soviet Memorial in Pankow, Berlin, was erected between May 1947 and November 1949. The memorial houses the largest Soviet cemetery in Berlin, which is also the largest Soviet cemetery in Europe outside of Russia.

We then head to Schönhausen Palace. Until 1960 it served as the official seat of the President of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Wilhelm Pieck, where he received state guests such as Nikita Khrushchev, Ho Chi Minh, Indira Gandhi, Fidel Castro, the last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife Raisa Gorbachova, in October 1989.

Then we will follow the Panke river to reach the old border post Bornholmer Straße. The Bornholmer Straße border post was the center of the events of October 1989, which led to the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German reunification and, in the longer term, the collapse of the USSR. We will relive these historic moments step by step and hour by hour and cross the Bornholmer Bridge to then head towards the imposing Karl Marx Allee.

Along the way we will discover Ernst-Thälmann Park, located in the center of the Prenzlauer Berg district and named in honor of former Communist Party leader Ernst Thälmann (1886-1944). We will admire the bronze monument of Ernst Thälmann made by the Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel between 1981 and 1986. The monument still remains a protected site today.

Along the way, we will visit the socialist works, mosaics and bas-reliefs of Alexanderplatz, then arrive at the imposing Karl Marx Allee the highlight of this tour. Karl Marx Allee is a monumental socialist boulevard, in Soviet architectural style, built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1952 and 1960 in Berlin Friedrichshain and Mitte. Today, the boulevard bears the name of Karl Marx. The boulevard was named Stalinallee between 1949 and 1961 and was a landmark building project in East Germany's post-World War II reconstruction program. Designed by architects Hermann Henselmann, Hartmann, Hopp, Leucht, Paulick and Souradny, it was to contain spacious and luxurious apartments for workers, as well as shops, restaurants, cafes (Moscow cafe), a tourist hotel and a huge cinema, the Kino International, which we will discover together.

We then head to the site of the Soviet War Memorial (Sowjetisches Kriegerdenkmal) in Treptow. The war memorial and military cemetery located in Berlin's Treptower Park. It was built according to plans by Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate 7,000 of the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945. It was inaugurated four years after the end of World War II in Europe, May 8, 1949. The monument is one of three Soviet memorials built in Berlin after the end of the war.

Having reached the southernmost part of our tour, we will head back to central Berlin to visit the last site of our tour, the sublime Tiergarten Soviet War Memorial.

End of the Brandenburg Gate tour.