Berlin Mitte: Squats, Galleries and the Long Walk West

In 1991 a 25-year-old medical student named Klaus Biesenbach and four others took over a derelict margarine factory on Auguststrasse, in what had been East Berlin. A local housing association leased them the buildings for 25 years. They called the place Kunst-Werke, and as KW Institute for Contemporary Art it is still there, which makes it one of the few things in Mitte that has outlasted the decade that made the neighborhood famous.

The East, unlocked

When the Wall came down in November 1989, Mitte was the historic center of a city that had just lost its rules. Many buildings stood empty, and plenty of them were quickly squatted by artists. Squats and short-lived basement clubs opened and closed in a matter of months. The most famous squat was Tacheles, a half-ruined former department store building on Oranienburger Strasse that artists occupied after the Wall fell and that was finally cleared in 2012, after which the site went to an investor.

Auguststrasse became the gallery street almost by accident. In 1992 Biesenbach staged a project called 37 Rooms in spaces along the street, and galleries followed the crowds he drew. Allgirls Gallery was founded the same year by a group of young women. For the rest of the decade, if you wanted to see what was new in Berlin, you walked the old Scheunenviertel, the barn quarter, a tight grid of streets north of Hackescher Markt.

It did not last in that form. By the late 2000s rents had climbed, the number of galleries in Berlin had grown from a few to a few hundred, and many of them moved to the former West. What Mitte kept was the habit of treating a shop as a place to see things, and that is the reason to go now.

Auguststrasse, then and now

Start at KW. In 1995 a fund tied to the Berlin lottery bought the building and leased it back to the institute, and a renovation ran from 2016 to 2018. Emma Enderby has directed it since 2024. The courtyard holds Café Bravo, a glass pavilion that makes a good spot for a first coffee. The KW history is worth a read before you arrive.

Farther down the street, Do You Read Me?! is the magazine shop worth crossing the city for, deep on fashion, art, design and architecture titles from everywhere. This is where you buy the international issues you will never see at a newsstand at home.

Clärchens Ballhaus, also on Auguststrasse, has been a dance hall since 1913, and in 2024 it reopened under a new concept, with dancing back in the old mirror hall. It is a strange and wonderful thing to find on a gallery street, a room built for waltzing that has watched everything else on the block change around it.

Torstrasse and the building with four lives

Torstrasse cuts across the top of the old center, and for years it marked the line between the polished side of Mitte and its plainer blocks. Now it is mostly a nightlife street, busy late and quiet before noon. Rosenthaler Platz, where it crosses Rosenthaler Strasse, was a strip of kebab shops in the 1990s before cafés and bars moved in.

One building on Torstrasse holds the whole century. It opened in 1929 as the Kaufhaus Jonass, a Bauhaus-style department store run by two Jewish businessmen, Hermann Golluber and Hugo Haller, where customers could pay in installments and bring goods back within a week. The Nazis forced the owners to emigrate, and the building became the seat of the Reich Youth Leadership, which ran the Hitler Youth. In 1946 it was nationalized and became the headquarters of the SED, the party that would go on to rule East Germany, and was known as the House of Unity. Protesters gathered outside it during the uprising of June 17, 1953. From 1959 it held the Institute for Marxism-Leninism and the party archive. By the mid-1990s it stood empty, and after reunification an investor group converted it into a private members' club. A glass stele outside marks the history. For the design movement its facade borrowed from, see our history of the Bauhaus.

Alte Schönhauser and the old grid

The shopping lives a few blocks south, on Alte Schönhauser Strasse and its neighbors. Alte and Neue Schönhauser Strasse, Münzstrasse and Mulackstrasse are where the independent designers, small concept stores and fashion boutiques cluster. Neue Schönhauser has the bigger designer labels and the rents to match. The Hackesche Höfe, a run of connected courtyards near Hackescher Markt, fill their ground floors with small boutiques and workshops.

We are not naming individual boutiques on these streets. Mitte's shops change tenants faster than any guide can track, and we could not confirm a current roster from 2025 or 2026 sources, so take the street names and walk them. The best finds here have always been the ones in a courtyard you almost skipped.

How to spend a day

Begin on Auguststrasse with KW and coffee, then browse Do You Read Me?!. Walk down Sophienstrasse to the Hackesche Höfe, then work up Alte Schönhauser Strasse and loop through Mulackstrasse and Münzstrasse. In the evening, head up to Torstrasse for a drink, and look for the old Jonass building on the way. If you want theater, the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz runs some productions with English surtitles. The official visitBerlin guide to Auguststrasse and Torstrasse covers the bars.

Check before you go. KW, Do You Read Me?!, Clärchens Ballhaus and the Volksbühne all appear at these locations in current sources, but exhibitions close for installation and programs change, so look at each one's own site first.

For other cities that shop this way, read our guides to Le Marais in Paris, London's Soho and Dover Street Market and Copenhagen design. More in our art and architecture archives, our city guides and the full Travel section.

Clärchens Ballhaus was holding dances on Auguststrasse sixteen years before the Kaufhaus Jonass opened its doors. If you get inside, find the mirror hall.