Mauerpark

Mauerpark means wall park, and the name is literal: the ground under it was the no-man's-land the Berlin Wall ran through until 1989. A painted section of the wall still stands along the western edge, now one of the few surfaces in the city where graffiti is legal, so it changes week to week.

On Sundays the park turns into the best free show in Berlin. A large flea market takes over one end, buskers spread across the lawn, and in the afternoon the Bearpit Karaoke session fills the stone amphitheater with a crowd in the thousands. Anyone can sign up to sing, and a good share of the audience is local rather than visiting.

The rest of the week it is an ordinary neighborhood park: barbecues, basketball, dogs and a slope that catches the evening sun. There are only a handful of food stands, so bring what you want to eat. Grilling is allowed only in the marked areas, a rule Berlin actually enforces.

The park straddles the border between Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding. Tram line M10 stops at the edge and Bernauer Straße station on the U8 subway line is a few minutes away, which also puts you at the Berlin Wall Memorial, the single best place in the city to understand how the border physically worked.