Today I’d hoped to visit both Tempelhof Airport and the Olympiastadion, but the latter had to be postponed since the S-bahn line 7 was out of service.

The S-barn has a circle route which girdles the city, making it easy to visit sites on the periphery. A few stops east of Schöneberg lay Tempelhof. From the station, it was less than a kilometer to what was once the largest airport building in the world. Although decommissioned in 2005, Flughafen Tempelhof is being redesigned as an office and creative space by the Berlin City government.

One approaches the airport by way of an immense playing field, where the Prussian Army once drilled. A 2015 referendum passed that permanently dedicated this acreage for recreational use. While I was walking to the terminal building, I passed runners and cyclists.

The vast buildings loom in the near distance. The former airport has a larger footprint than Central Park. The following photos give a sense of its immensity. 2024 is also the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, when the US and UK delivered millions of tons of supplies after the Soviets cut off access from 1948 to 1949.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to tour the interior since tickets had to be ordered online and my visit was spur of the moment. Nonetheless, there was a fine photo display in the visitor’s center showcasing the building’s history and the hall to the WC was open, so I was able to get a photo of the original ceiling lights.

There are only a few examples of Nazi architecture remaining in Berlin: Tempelhof Airport, Olympiastadion and the Reich Air Ministry Building, which I featured in Friday’s post.

Since the S-Bahn line to Olympiastadion was out of service, I made my way back to my Airbnb and packed up and headed for Hotel Luc, in the center. After check-in I walked around the Unter den Linden again, venturing up to the TV Tower and eventually to Alexanderstraße, where I took some pictures of some East German apartment blocks, which have that uniformly decrepit look. On Monday I plan to take the U-Bahn deep into the old Stalinist quarter and walk back to the TV tower along Karl-Marx-Allee.

Unter den Linden becomes Karl-Liebnecht-Straße near the TV Tower, named after a 1920’s Communist leader. The neighborhood becomes a bit shabbier at this point. The tallest building is the Park Hotel, which was built during the DDR era for visiting dignitaries from the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries.

Finally, I headed over to Museum Island, where I plan to visit the massive art museum and the German Museum of History. Sadly, the famous Pergamon Museum is closed for remodeling.

I walked almost 12 miles on Sunday and hadn’t had much to heat, so I grabbed dinner and then headed back to the hotel for a deep sleep.