The eighty rooms
Rough concrete spaces bearing their past uses.
Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0 · GodeNehler — CC BY-SA 4.0 · GodeNehler — CC BY-SA 4.0 · GodeNehler — CC BY-SA 4.0
The Boros Collection is contemporary art shown inside a Second World War concrete air-raid shelter — and the building alone justifies the visit. It was built in 1942 as a civilian shelter with walls three metres thick, then passed through a barely credible sequence of uses: a Soviet prisoner-of-war jail, then a store for imported fruit in East Germany that locals called the banana bunker, then a hard techno club in the 1990s notorious for its excesses. The art collector Christian Boros bought it in 2003 and converted it into a private exhibition space, building himself a glass apartment on the roof. The eighty small original rooms were kept as they were, with their rough walls and the marks of former uses, and contemporary works installed inside them — a sharp contrast between military concrete and art. Visits are by guided tour only with compulsory advance booking, group sizes are strictly limited, and slots sell out weeks ahead. That makes it the least spontaneous destination in Berlin, but it is also what protects the experience: a small group in a tight space with a guide explaining each work.
Rough concrete spaces bearing their past uses.
The collector's home atop the bunker.
Reinhardtstrasse 20, 10117 Berlin
Berlin Museum of Medical HistoryThe Museum of Medical History at the Charité hospital is built on a collection a4 minutes walk4.7
TränenpalastThe name means "Palace of Tears". It is a small glass and steel building beside 5 minutes walk4.5
Fotografiska BerlinFotografiska Berlin is the German branch of the Swedish contemporary photography5 minutes walk4.5
Futurium — House of FuturesThe Futurium is a museum of a single question: how do we want to live? No antiqu8 minutes walk4.5
Pergamonmuseum. Das PanoramaThe Pergamon Museum — Berlin's most famous, with its Great Altar and Ishtar Gate9 minutes walk4.6Booking is through the collection's own website only and opens in defined windows, and slots go very fast — plan weeks rather than days ahead, particularly for weekends and for the English-language tours, which are fewer than the German ones. There are no tickets at the door at all, so arriving without a booking means not getting in.