Berlin in 3 days

Brandenburg Gate before nine. It isn't about the light; it's that Pariser Platz is full of coaches by ten, while at nine you can stand dead centre and see the gate without a single head in front of it. Fifteen minutes is enough — this is a place you look at, not tour.

Reichstag, your dome slot, with the same ID you registered with; security is airport-grade and takes what it takes. Upstairs a twenty-minute audio guide starts itself and walks you up the spiral ramp, with the parliamentary chamber below you, which is the entire point of the glass ball.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, two minutes from the gate. Walk in among the stelae rather than looking from the edge — the ground drops, the blocks rise over your head and the city noise disappears; that is the whole experience, and it takes ten minutes. Underneath is the Place of Information, free, closed on Mondays, with a room where the names are read aloud.

Walk to Potsdamer Platz, where a few original Wall segments stand on the pavement, plastered with chewing gum. Lunch here is corporate and expensive — better to move on to the Topography of Terror at Niederkirchnerstrasse 8: a free exhibition on the site of the Gestapo headquarters, with a surviving stretch of Wall running along the street.

Checkpoint Charlie is five minutes from here and worth exactly that. What you see is a replica guardhouse (the original sits in a museum at the other end of town), souvenir shops and fast-food chains around a junction. Take the photo and go; the private Wall museum opposite charges admission, while the border as it really was is free to see on Bernauer Strasse on day three.

The Tiergarten and the Victory Column — two hundred hectares of park to wander without a destination, with the column on a roundabout in the middle. Evening in Mitte, around Gendarmenmarkt and Auguststrasse.

Museum Island at opening. The area ticket is €24, valid for one day, and lets you into every open house — and you enter through the James-Simon-Galerie, the new white building with the steps down to the canal, not through a museum door. Under-18s pay nothing but still collect a ticket at the desk.

The Neues Museum first, because that is where the crowd collects. After it, the Bode is the quietest house on the island: sculpture, Byzantine art and the finest staircase in the city, and at eleven you'll almost have it to yourself. The Alte Nationalgalerie is third if you have the stamina — Friedrich, Menzel, the German Impressionists.

Opposite the Bode there is a separate building holding the panorama of ancient Pergamon, which is included in the same ticket. It is the only substitute for the closed Pergamonmuseum, and take it for what it is: a thirty-metre circle, not a museum.

Lunch around Hackescher Markt, but in the side streets — Rosenthaler and Auguststrasse, not the square itself. The Hackesche Höfe, eight linked courtyards from 1907, take half an hour and cost nothing.

Alexanderplatz and the TV Tower. The standard ticket is €20, the deck is open from nine in the morning to eleven at night, and tickets are sold for a time slot — if you don't mind, take one near closing, when the city is lit.

S-Bahn to Warschauer Strasse and a walk along the East Side Gallery, the longest painted stretch of the Wall, in late light once the coaches have gone. From there it's ten minutes over the Oberbaumbrücke to Kreuzberg and dinner.

The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse — where the border survives in its full depth: two walls, the strip between them, a watchtower and the outline of houses demolished to clear the ground. Free, outdoors, with a documentation centre closed on Mondays. Allow ninety minutes.

Bernauer Strasse ends at Mauerpark. On Sundays there's a flea market and karaoke in the amphitheatre; on other days it's an ordinary park with a graffiti wall and a view over the district from the hill in the middle.

Prenzlauer Berg: Kastanienallee, Kollwitzplatz and the streets around it — the place to see what thirty years of renovation does to an eastern neighbourhood. Have lunch here, before heading south.

U-Bahn line 8 to Kreuzberg. Out at Kottbusser Tor, then along the Landwehrkanal to the Admiralbrücke — the Berlin version of an outdoor living room. On Tuesdays and Fridays the Turkish market runs along Maybachufer from 11:00 to 18:30.

Tempelhofer Feld, a former airport turned park: three hundred hectares, two runways used for skating and kite flying, and not a single ticket. Enter from Tempelhofer Damm or from Oderstrasse in Neukölln; the gates close at sunset.

Last evening in Neukölln: Weserstrasse and the streets around it, where the bars are small and the prices still Berlin prices. If you want it calmer, Bergmannstrasse in Kreuzberg is the same thing ten years older.