The Jewish Museum is amongst the most remarkable works of architecture in modern Berlin, no insignificant feat in view of the city's recent building increase. The silver lightening bolt cutting through residential Kreuzberg is the outcome of an international contest which told architects to plan a building that would accommodate a permanent exposition time scaling German-Jewish history. The successful proposal was by Daniel Libeskind, a Polish-born Jew whose vital hypothetical offerings to architecture had never been put to the realistic exam. His building is full of sloping walkways, black-walled voids and unbalanced windows planned to throw the visitor off balance. The architecture displays the many inventive offerings made by Jews to German society and learning over the hundreds of years when Berlin was homeland to one of the most energetic Jewish communities in Europe. The void left by the holocaust is represented by a gigantic, blank, echoing tower, and the puzzlement of immigration to a new land by the E. T. A. Hoffmann garden. See the museum web site for more info and images. You could stay close to this in Holiday apartments berlin germany

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie is a amazing location for a museum about the former GDR. Unfortunately the privately-owned Haus am Checkpoint Charlie celebrates the win of capitalism over communism with over-sentimental art, over-the-top descriptions of escapes over the Wall, and long-winded digressions about peaceful resistance to dictatorship in Eastern Europe. The fall of the Wall was certainly an international emblem that the cold war had ended, and of liberty in a united Europe, but the museum neglects to explore the complications of dichotomies like those the wall represented. It substitutes beautiful stories for tricky explorations of East German reality. The descriptions are translated into English, French and Russian. Too bad the display contains an exhausting amount of text.

German Historical Museum

The eternal home of the German Historical Museum (DHM) in the Zeughaus is being re-done and will remain closed until 2011. In the meanwhile the DHM has a temporary home across the road in the Kronprinzenpalais (Unter den Linden 3). The foremost expo of the museum is not open to the community for the duration of the renovations. The DHM in the Kronprinzenpalais shows a programme of topical exhibitions. You can stay close to this on your Berlin city break by staying in apartments berlin germany and enjoy the central location to all else the city has to offer.

German Resistance Memorial Centre

On the main scale of things there wasn't much resistance to the Nazi dictatorship of 1933-45; options of possible disagreement were located quickly and shut down. Those hardy souls who did resist are the focus of this permanent exposition in rooms which were part of German army head office for the duration of WWII. The museum is based here for the reason that it was from this building that Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg considered his botched attempt on Hitler's life in 20. July 1944. Guided excursions of the exposition are free of charge and are good value as they cover the rise and fall of Nazi Germany as well as those who resisted it.