videoSightseeing

Time Travel with a Screen

Since 2004, videoSightseeing has been combining classic city tours with moving images. In the buses, historical film and photo documents are played on large flat screens, precisely when the bus reaches the location where the recordings were made. For walking tours, guests are instead given iPads on which guides can play live films using a specially developed technology. The company behind videoSightseeing is based in Prenzlauer Berg, but its tours start all over the city – depending on the theme, in front of the Babylon cinema on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, on Reichstagufer, Unter den Linden, in Krausenstraße, or at the main entrance of the Philharmonie. The program thematically ranges from the Roaring Twenties, the Nazi era and the construction of the Berlin Wall, to the Fifties, Berlin as a film city, and a crime tour through the capital of crime. The film excerpts come from archives and are constantly recompiled, so regular guests see different material on the same route.

Babylon Berlin and Other Highlights

The main attraction is the tour family centered around the Babylon Berlin series, for which the company is an official partner. The grand bus tour into the world of Gereon Rath lasts two and a half hours and costs 38 Euros, or 25.50 Euros reduced; at least one filming location is visited from the inside, but guests only find out which one during the tour. The Roaring Twenties tour and the Crime Tour are cheaper at 29 Euros each, as is the rolling cinema Film City Berlin at 23 Euros. Those who prefer to explore on foot can book the Babylon Berlin walking tour for 33 Euros or the six-hour full-day tour for 79 Euros, both including a rental iPad. According to the provider, tours are conducted in more than ten languages, and group sizes range from five to five hundred people. One of the guides is co-owner Arne Krasting, a 1920s expert and author of a book on Berlin buildings of the Weimar Republic. Tour groups of ten or more people receive a discount on the total price upon arrangement.