Olympic Stadium

The Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Summer Olympics, the games the Nazi regime staged as a propaganda showcase and the games where the American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals. The stadium came through the war largely intact and was thoroughly modernized before the 2006 soccer World Cup, but the monumental stone exterior is original.

That combination makes a visit unusual. It is a working modern arena wrapped in a 1930s structure that the city chose to keep and explain rather than demolish. Guided tours cover both sides of that, including the locker rooms, the marathon gate and the bell tower with its view over the grounds and the Grunewald forest beyond.

It is the home ground of the soccer club Hertha BSC, hosts the German Cup final every year and doubles as a stadium concert venue. On match days the whole area is packed and the trains run full; outside events it is quiet and you can walk the grounds at your own pace.

The stadium has its own stations on the U2 subway line and on the S-Bahn, both called Olympiastadion, roughly 25 minutes from the center. It sits in far western Charlottenburg near the Grunewald and the Havel river, so it pairs naturally with a day out in green West Berlin rather than with the sights in Mitte.