Berlin: The Tempelhofer Feld

Short: Shaped by military history and turned into an airport that became a famous landmark for democratic freedom, the Tempelhofer Feld is now a unparalleled recreational area in the Berlin south. Areas for barbecue, gardening, dog owners, cultural and historical education, sports, and exhibitions are spread across this field. And yes – its BIG.

 

Having hear of the area, I took the chance to visit (I live quite a ways away from there) when I saw a free-to-enter exhibition was taking place there on the Berlin website (checking I realize that the English website version does not have this page! - here the German one). Simultaneousely there were exhibitions for circus’, retro-roller-scating, and astronomy. But they only made up a tiny fraction of the area.

After visiting the free expo, I walked across the area for about 90 minutes learning about the locations history. Being used as a military parade square for a long time it became the area for Berlins first airport. Then it was tiny, due to the only just emerging air crafts. In between WW1 and WW2 it got scaled up significantly. And during the years leading up to WW2 the nazis wanted to build a new colossal airport in the same spot. Only partly finished it was used during the war for manufacturing, supply and troop transport, but it was never finished.

The airport got its historical fame when the allied troops finished the airport ot be more opperational and used it (along with some other smaller airports) to supply West Berlin during the time, when the USSR was blockading the supply by land, in an attempt to wrest control of West Berlin from the allies. The insane logistics and their success, of supplying an entire city by plane, were successful. Not least because of the role the Tempelhof Airport played. After the unificaion of Germany the Airport functioned as the unified cities airport up in the early 2000’s. In 2010 the area got opened as a recreational area to the public. After a long while of military use and history of commeciral use, the field now is an amazing de-economized recreational area, the likes of which I don’t know of.

Can you see the houses in the distance? This area is huge!

I recommend you bringing time (2-4 hours), a scooter/bike, a picknick basket, and SUNSCREEN - then explore, there is much to discover.

There are areas reserved for breeding birds, areas for kite-scating, areas for barbecuing, dog parks, areas of former protest gardeners that were allowed their area (which is glorious), long roads to do bike sports and longboarding, there are info boards for the history of the place, and vaaast grass areas to go picknicking on. If you like to fly a kite, this is also THE area in Berlin for you.

I recommend you discover the rest for yourselves. Thanks for your time. Stay beautiful!