Day-by-day programme of this 10-day itinerary across Berlin, Dresden, Nuremberg and Munich.
Day 1 — Arrival in Berlin
Land, reach Mitte and head straight for the floodlit symbol of the city, with a first currywurst for dinner. Tomorrow the real thing begins.
- ✈️ Berlin — Aeroporto di Berlino Brandeburgo (BER)
- 📍 Brandenburg Gate — The monument that sums up two centuries of German history: a Prussian triumphal gate, backdrop to Nazi parades, walled into no-man's-land for twenty-eight years and finally the stage of reunification. In the evening, floodlit over Pariser Platz, it still gives you a shiver. Unter den Linden, the avenue of lime trees, starts here — but tonight just enjoy the scene: a short walk north waits a Berlin dinner that allows no elegant cutlery.
- 🍽️ Curry 61 — The Berlin baptism is the currywurst: sausage sliced into rounds, spiced tomato sauce, a dusting of curry powder and fries, eaten standing at the counter as it should be. Curry 61, near Hackescher Markt, is among Mitte's best loved — with a vegan option for modern times. Around it, the restored courtyards of the Hackesche Höfe deserve a digestive stroll before heading in: tomorrow morning you climb the Reichstag dome.
- 🏨 H2 Hotel Berlin-Alexanderplatz — Mitte, Berlino
Day 2 — Imperial and museum Berlin
The Reichstag's glass dome booked at opening, the maze of stelae at the Memorial, Nefertiti's bust on Museum Island and an evening in the city's most elegant square.
- 📍 Reichstag — The German parliament is Europe's most symbolic building: burned in 1933, conquered in 1945, wrapped by Christo in 1995 and reborn with Norman Foster's glass dome, where you spiral up above the debating chamber — democracy letting itself be watched from above. Entry is free but must be booked online days ahead, ID in hand. Outside, skirt the Tiergarten southwards: five minutes and the pavement ripples into grey stelae.
- 📍 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe — Two thousand seven hundred and eleven concrete blocks of different heights on undulating ground: Peter Eisenman's memorial explains nothing and that is exactly why it works — walking towards the centre the ground sinks, the stelae rise above your head, the city disappears and only disorientation remains. The underground documentation centre (free) gives the names and the stories. You resurface on Unter den Linden and walk it all the way to the Spree: at the end, on an island, lives an Egyptian queen.
- 📍 Neues Museum — Museum Island is a UNESCO site and the Neues Museum its gem: rebuilt by David Chipperfield leaving the war's wounds visible, it keeps in a room all of her own the bust of Nefertiti, three thousand three hundred years old and still the most hypnotic portrait ever carved (no photographs: you simply look). Around her, Egypt, Troy and Europe's prehistory. Outside, the Cathedral and the Lustgarten demand a photo, then head south-west: the day's last square is its most theatrical.
- 📍 Gendarmenmarkt — Twin cathedrals — the Huguenots' French one and the German one — facing each other with the Konzerthaus in between: the Gendarmenmarkt is the eighteenth-century Berlin that survived, elegant as a sheet of music. At blue hour, lamps lit, it is the right place to end the day; the beer halls and restaurants between here and Friedrichstraße do the rest. Tomorrow you change century and go where the city was cut in two: starting from the real Wall.
Day 3 — The Berlin of the Wall
Cold War day: the Wall memorial as it really was, the world's most famous crossing point and the stretch painted by artists. Evening in Kreuzberg's market halls.
- 📍 Berlin Wall Memorial — The only place where the Wall still exists in full: outer wall, death strip, watchtower and inner wall, preserved on Bernauer Straße — the street where house windows opened to the West and front doors to the East, stage of the most desperate escapes of 1961. From the documentation centre's tower (free) you look down on the strip: no book explains it better. Then the U-Bahn takes you south, to the crossing where American and Soviet tanks faced each other, barrels raised.
- 📍 Checkpoint Charlie — The white guardhouse with the sign 'You are leaving the American sector' is a replica and there is plenty of tourist circus around it, but the spot remains what it was: the crossing between sectors where in October 1961 the world brushed against a third world war. To understand, the photo panel and the nearby Wall museum with its escape stories — inside suitcases, modified cars, hot-air balloons — matter more than the checkpoint itself. A quick lunch on Friedrichstraße, then the elevated U1 runs east, where the Wall became an art gallery.
- 📍 East Side Gallery — One kilometre three hundred metres of original Wall along the Spree, painted in 1990 by 118 artists from 21 countries: the fraternal kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker, the Trabant bursting through the concrete, and a hundred other murals turned icons. It is the world's longest open-air gallery, walked with the river at your side up to the red-brick Oberbaumbrücke, Berlin's most beautiful bridge. Across the bridge begins Kreuzberg: for dinner there is a market hall that has known its business since 1891.
- 🍽️ Markthalle Neun — Kreuzberg's nineteenth-century market hall, saved by the neighbourhood's residents: producers' stalls, craft beers and kitchens from around the world — Thursday's Street Food Thursday is an institution, but on other evenings too you dine well hopping from stand to stand. This is multicultural Berlin in its habitat. Outside, Kreuzberg's bars carry the night on for those who want it. Tomorrow you leave the city for a day: the kings of Prussia await in their gardens.
Day 4 — Potsdam and the palaces of Prussia
A day trip: Frederick the Great's 'carefree' palace with its terraced vines, the colossal Neues Palais and the Dutch Quarter for coffee. Back to Berlin in the evening.
- 📍 Sanssouci Palace — Half an hour by regional train and you are in eighteenth-century Prussia: Sanssouci — 'without worries' — is the rococo refuge where Frederick the Great played the flute with Voltaire at dinner, just twelve rooms atop six terraces of vines that form Brandenburg's most photographed stage set. Timed ticket to book ahead; the combination ticket covers the other palaces too. Then cross the park — half an hour's walk among fountains and follies — towards the show of power at the end of the avenue.
- 📍 New Palace — If Sanssouci is intimacy, the Neues Palais is muscle: two hundred rooms, a 220-metre façade and the Grottensaal encrusted with shells and minerals, built by Frederick after the Seven Years' War to tell Europe that Prussia was not on its knees — he called it his 'fanfaronade'. The last Kaiser lived here too, until 1918. Bus 695 takes you back towards central Potsdam: the afternoon ends among little red-brick houses that look stolen from Amsterdam.
- 📍 Dutch Quarter, Potsdam — One hundred and thirty-four red-brick gabled houses, built in the eighteenth century to attract Dutch craftsmen who in the end arrived in dribs and drabs: today the Holländisches Viertel is Potsdam's drawing room, full of cafés, galleries and shops where the day closes with cake and coffee as the German Kaffee und Kuchen tradition commands. The regional train returns to Berlin in half an hour. Last night in the capital: tomorrow morning the suitcase boards the first ICE heading south, towards the Florence of the Elbe.
Day 5 — Dresden, the Florence of the Elbe
Two hours by train and you enter Saxon Baroque: the Zwinger courtyard, the risen dome of the Frauenkirche, the world's largest porcelain mural and sunset from the terrace over the Elbe.
- ✈️ Berlin Hauptbahnhof → Dresden Hauptbahnhof — Wiener Platz 4, Dresda
- 📍 Zwinger — Augustus the Strong's Baroque courtyard is a theatre of stone: gilded pavilions, the Nymphs' Bath fountain, the carillon of Meissen porcelain bells chiming every quarter hour. Inside, the Gemäldegalerie with Raphael's Sistine Madonna — the one with art history's two most famously bored cherubs — and a dizzying porcelain collection. Razed in 1945 and rebuilt stone by stone. Out on the Theaterplatz side, you pass the Semper opera house and head for the dome that rules it all.
- 📍 Frauenkirche Dresden — Dresden's symbol church collapsed two days after the February 1945 bombing, and for half a century the GDR left its rubble as a warning. Rebuilt after reunification with the blackened original stones set among the new ones — you can spot them at a glance, dark among the pale — it is today a symbol of reconciliation: the golden dome cross was donated by Britain. Climb the dome: the Elbe, the spires and the new town's rooftops open out at 67 metres. Back down, around the corner runs a procession of 24,000 tiles.
- 📍 Fürstenzug — A hundred metres of mural on 24,000 Meissen porcelain tiles: the Procession of Princes parades along the outer wall of the royal stables with 35 margraves, dukes and kings of Saxony on horseback, eight centuries of the Wettin dynasty in single file. Miraculously survived the bombs. From here it is steps up to the Brühl Terrace, the 'balcony of Europe', for sunset over the Elbe and its paddle steamers; dinner in a Neumarkt beer hall. Tomorrow morning the ICE drops into Franconia, towards the city of emperors.
- 🏨 NH Collection Dresden Altmarkt — Altstadt, Dresda
Day 6 — Medieval Nuremberg
Train into Franconia and an afternoon in the old town: grilled sausages at the historic tavern, the market square with its Beautiful Fountain and sunset from the Kaiserburg walls.
- ✈️ Dresden Hauptbahnhof → Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof — Bahnhofsplatz 9, Norimberga
- 🍽️ Bratwursthäusle bei St. Sebald — Nürnberger Rostbratwürste are sausages the size of a finger, protected by European designation: by law they are served in sixes, eights or tens off the beechwood grill, with sauerkraut or potato salad and a spoonful of horseradish. The Bratwursthäusle beside St Sebald's church has been grilling them since 1313 (with a few historical pauses): the smoke from the chimney is its shop sign. Belly full, walk a few steps down into the market square, where a golden fountain promises luck to whoever turns its ring.
- 📍 Hauptmarkt — Nuremberg's market square is the city's civic heart: stalls of fruit and gingerbread (Lebkuchen is religion here), the gilded façade of the Frauenkirche with its noon carillon of electors parading before the emperor, and the Schöner Brunnen, the Gothic 'Beautiful Fountain' with a brass ring in its railing: turn it three times and make a wish. In December the Christkindlesmarkt, the world's most famous Christmas market, erupts here. Then you climb: the castle watches it all from its sandstone height.
- 📍 Kaiserburg — For five hundred years every newly elected Holy Roman Emperor had to hold his first diet here: the Kaiserburg was Europe's political centre of gravity, and from its ramparts the old town is a sea of red roofs and spires. You visit the Romanesque double chapel, the halls and the 47-metre-deep well. On the way down, stop at Albrecht Dürer's half-timbered house, the castle's neighbour. Dinner in the lanes below the walls: tomorrow morning a difficult, necessary museum, then the train to the capital of beer.
- 🏨 Hotel Central Nürnberg — Altstadt, Norimberga
Day 7 — Memory and the train to Munich
Morning at the documentation centre on Nazism, on the Reich rally grounds. Then an hour by train and you step into Munich's parlour: Marienplatz and dinner at the Hofbräuhaus.
- 📍 Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds — Nuremberg was the city of the Nazi party rallies and then of the trial that judged its leaders: the documentation centre, driven like a shard of glass and steel into the unfinished Congress Hall — a brick colosseum never completed — recounts with rigour how a democracy slid into dictatorship. Outside, the Zeppelin Field with the stone grandstand from which Hitler spoke is deliberately left to decay. Back to the station by tram: one hour of ICE and Franconian Gothic gives way to Bavarian onion domes.
- ✈️ Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof → München Hauptbahnhof — Bayerstraße 10a, Monaco di Baviera
- 📍 Marienplatz — Munich's parlour for eight centuries: the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus with its façade of spires and statues, the Glockenspiel that at 11, at 12 (and at 5 pm from March to October) stages jousts and coopers' dances with 32 nearly life-size figures, the golden Mary column at the centre. Take the lift up the town hall tower to get your bearings: on clear days the Alps close the horizon. Then a stroll between Kaufingerstraße and the cathedral: tonight's dinner is in the most famous beer hall on the planet.
- 🍽️ Hofbräuhaus — The court brewery founded in 1589: frescoed vaults, a band in Lederhosen, litre Maß mugs and long tables shared with strangers — Mozart and Lenin drank here, and the regulars still keep their personal mugs in locked racks. Pork knuckle, giant pretzels and Obatzda complete the ritual. Is it touristy? Yes. Should you do it anyway? Absolutely. You walk dinner off along the lit streets of the centre: tomorrow Munich shows itself in full, from the market to the surfers in the park.
- 🏨 Mercure Hotel München Altstadt — Altstadt, Monaco di Baviera
Day 8 — Munich
Munich's full day: weisswurst at the market, the Wittelsbach palace, and an afternoon in the English Garden between the Eisbach surfers and the Chinese Tower beer garden.
- 📍 Frauenkirche Munich — The twin towers with their green onion domes are Munich's profile — by regulation no building in the centre may rise above them. Inside, the legend of the Devil's Footprint: the black print in the floor from which, they say, the devil could not see a single window and left, deceived. The south tower climb gives the best duet: the Altstadt rooftops and the Alps. Outside, five minutes south and you plunge into the green-and-white belly of Germany's best-loved market.
- 🍽️ Viktualienmarkt — Two hundred years and 140 stalls: alpine cheeses, flowers, spices, Bavarian honey and the decorated maibaum at the centre of the beer garden where you bring your own food but buy the beer there. The midday ritual is the Weisswurst, the white sausage that by tradition must not hear the noon bells: sucked from its skin (purists) or peeled with a knife, with a pretzel, sweet mustard and a Weissbier. From here, a ten-minute walk north takes you into the palace from which the Wittelsbachs ruled for 700 years.
- 📍 Munich Residenz — Germany's largest city palace: 130 rooms including the Renaissance Antiquarium — a frescoed 66-metre vault worth the ticket on its own — the Treasury with the Wittelsbach crowns and the rococo Cuvilliés Theatre, a gilded jewel box that survived the bombs dismantled into pieces. On the way out, rub the noses of the bronze lions on Residenzstraße: it brings luck, Münchners say. And now the day's reward: a few steps and one of the world's largest urban parks opens up, with a surprise you don't expect — waves.
- 📍 English Garden — Bigger than Central Park and infinitely more Bavarian: at the southern entrance, on the Eisbach, surfers ride the canal's standing wave in wetsuits all year round — the city's most hypnotic free show. You wander up through meadows (some nudist, a local tradition), streams and the Greek Monopteros temple to the Chinese Tower, where seven thousand beer-garden seats wait beneath the pagoda: Maß, pretzels and a brass band playing. It is the last full evening: tomorrow the fairy-tale castle, early alarm.
Day 9 — Neuschwanstein
The grand-finale day trip: Ludwig II's castle in the Alps, the view from Mary's Bridge suspended over the gorge and the painted town of Füssen. Back to Munich in the evening.
- ✈️ München Hauptbahnhof → Füssen — Stazione di Füssen
- 📍 Neuschwanstein Castle — The castle that inspired Disney is Ludwig II's dream in stone: white towers on a rocky spur, Wagnerian halls — the artificial Grotto, the Singers' Hall, the Byzantine Throne Room with no throne — and the melancholy of a king who slept here just 172 nights before dying in mystery. Tickets ONLINE ONLY, weeks ahead, with rigid entry times; the climb from Hohenschwangau takes half an hour on foot or by shuttle. After the interior, a ten-minute path leads to the bridge where the castle becomes a postcard.
- 📍 Marienbrücke — Mary's Bridge hangs over the Pöllat gorge, ninety metres above the waterfall, directly opposite the castle: this is THE photo spot, where Neuschwanstein floats among the forests with lake Alpsee behind. Ludwig had it reinforced so he could admire the building site lit up at night. At peak times you queue for the selfie: patience, the view repays it. Back down in the valley, the bus returns to Füssen, to taste the town everyone skips and that instead closes the day just right.
- 📍 Füssen — At the southern end of the Romantic Road, Füssen is a painted alpine town: pastel frescoed façades along the Reichenstraße, the Hohes Schloss with trompe-l'oeil towers and the Benedictine monastery of St Mang on the emerald-green river Lech. Europe's finest lutes were once built here. A gelato, a slow wander, and the six o'clock regional train returns to Munich with sunset over the pre-Alps at the window. Last Bavarian night: tomorrow morning, a fried pastry and the plane.
Day 10 — Last breakfast and the journey home
Breakfast in Munich's oldest, greasiest café, a final stroll through the centre and the S-Bahn to the airport. You leave with ten days of Germany in your eyes.
- 🍽️ Café Frischhut — Behind the Viktualienmarkt, the 'Schmalznudel' has been frying Bavaria's four traditional pastries in hot lard since 1973, right in front of its customers: the schmalznudel flat and crisp at the edges, the ausgezogene, the rohrnudeln. Eaten piping hot, dusted with sugar, with a coffee at a shared wooden table. It is the right farewell: simple, greasy and happy. Then the S1 or S8 S-Bahn runs to the airport in 40 minutes.
- ✈️ Munich — Aeroporto di Milano Linate (LIN)
