Teufelsberg Berlin

The former NSA listening station, where around 1,500 people worked until 1992, stands on 26 million cubic meters of war rubble. The 'Mythos Teufelsberg' tour lasts one and a half hours and ends on the viewing platform between the three white radomes. A special city tour in Berlin that shows the city's layout from above.

Teufelsberg Berlin: the Listening Station above Grunewald

Teufelsberg is located in Grunewald on Teufelsseechaussee and is not a natural hill. From 1950 onwards, around 800 lorries with 7,000 tons of rubble drove up every day, and in 22 years, 26 million cubic meters of debris piled up to form an elevation. Beneath it, to this day, lies the unfinished building of the Faculty of Military Technology, for which Adolf Hitler laid the foundation stone in November 1937 and where not a single lecture ever took place. From 1952, the city planted 480,000 trees and 40,000 shrubs on the debris, so the mountain is now forested. Those who want to visit Teufelsberg Berlin walk the last part on foot. From the S-Bahn stations Heerstraße and Grunewald, it’s about two kilometers each, and there are no parking spaces on the site itself. Two free parking spaces are located below the access road, from there it’s about a ten-minute uphill walk. Once at the top, you stand on the highest artificial elevation in the city and only then realize how flat Berlin actually is all around.

Tour through the former NSA Listening Station with a Panoramic View over Berlin

From 1971 to 1992, the station was one of the most important listening posts for the US National Security Agency outside the United States, with around 1,500 people working here. What remains are the three white radomes on the tower building, which can be seen from half of the western part of the city. The one-and-a-half-hour “Mythos Teufelsberg” tour tells this story directly at the original locations and usually ends on the viewing platform, from which the view extends over Grunewald and the city center. After the withdrawal of the Allies, an investor group bought the property in 1996 for 5.2 million Deutschmarks and planned luxury apartments, but the building permit expired in 2004. Since October 2018, the site has been a protected monument. Today, the ruin serves as a gallery for street art, and the “Declassified” exhibition about the mountain’s secrets is included in the admission fee. The tour can only be booked together with an admission ticket. Admission costs 12 Euros for adults, and the German-language tour costs an additional 12 Euros.