Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin

Botanical Garden: 43 Hectares for a Single Sentence

Between Dahlem and Lichterfelde lies one of the world’s largest botanical gardens, and most Berliners last visited it as children. 43 hectares, around 22,000 plant species, fifteen show greenhouses. The centerpiece is the Great Tropical House from 1907: sixty meters long, twenty-five meters high, one of the largest steel and glass constructions ever built, and inside, palms, lianas, and giant bamboo in humid, warm air. Anyone who enters in winter immediately has fogged glasses – and then stands in the rainforest while snow lies outside.

Next door awaits the Victoria House with its giant water lilies, whose leaves are large enough to carry a child. Opposite, the Italian Garden begins with trimmed hedges and water basins. For a marriage proposal, the selection is almost too vast: tropical heat under glass, strict symmetry outdoors, or a path in the arboretum where no one has passed for twenty minutes.

The Cheapest Trick at the Botanical Garden is the Best One

In the late afternoon, admission is halved to 5 Euros, and that’s precisely when the complex becomes empty. The light is low over the lawns, the greenhouses empty out, and you practically have the main paths to yourself. Two things are good to know: There is no parking lot, but the S1 and two bus lines stop almost in front of the entrance. And unfortunately, dogs must stay outside.