For one of Berlin’s best views, take an invigorating walk across the Tiergarten, Berlin’s central park, to the Victory Column, the Siegessäule, on the Grosser Stern roundabout. Up on the viewing platform, underneath the wings of Goldelse, the goddess of victory, is the spot where the angels in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire discussed the fate of mankind.
Today the view stretches to the Reichstag’s glass dome. A short walk from the Berlinale Palast, tucked away in the inner courtyard of an austere modernist building is the German Resistance Memorial Centre (Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Stauffenbergstrasse 13-14) a monument to the unsung heroes and pacifists who confronted the Nazis, including Thomas Mann and young student Sophie Scholl, who was executed. The building, known as Bendlerblock, is where Tom Cruise shot the scene in Valkyrie reenacting the events of 20 July 1944 when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler.