A Hitchhiker's Guide To Berlin Street Art
Berlin is the city of techno, art and döner kebabs. It’s also a city of cold long winters and eclectic summer days spent between city parks, lakes and beer gardens. It’s an international, vibrant hub full of artistic opportunities on every corner but it’s also a city that faced oppression and division for many years. The rise in popularity and presence of Berlin street art and graffiti coincided with the fall of the Berlin wall and the consequent burst of freedom and possibilities that invaded the city. People yearned for a voice and, all of a sudden, there came plenty of empty buildings and streets in which they could convey their emotions through the medium of street art.
The relics of that turbulent past can still be seen by wandering eyes in some parts of Berlin. While it progressively became arguably the art capital of Europe, with its myriad of art galleries, events, museums and pop-up exhibitions, Berlin street art movement was the way for everyday people to speak out - away from the hands of art institutions. So while it is always fun to stroll around the city going from bar to bar or discovering new cafès, the cool graffiti and street art coloring our dear city are many, and you might need some guidance for it.
Hop on! This is our brief guide to some of the best spots to check out Berlin street art.
Haus Schwarzenberg
Where to find graffiti and murals in the center of Berlin?
First stop is Rosenthaler Strasse. Located in the heart of Mitte, the area enjoys a wide variety of stores, shops and restaurants. But we are not here for that. What’s important is Haus Schwarzenberg, a little side street formed by a set of three inner courtyards covered with graffiti and murals by various artists. As you enter, you leave the clean streets behind and walk into a backyard that still looks like how Berlin did 30 years ago. At the back of the small alley you can find the Neurotitan Gallery and Shop. An organization that has been putting up roughly 12 shows a year since 1996, ranging from Street Art to comics to illustration to paintings to concerts. Another important spot is the Anne Frank Zentrum, which tells the story of Anne Frank in the way of a timeline showing the events in her life parallel to events that took place in the history of Nazi Germany. The street art here is always changing fast so feel free to go back every once in a while.
"Make Art Not War" by Obey The Giant
Let’s go East for some big names in the street art of Berlin
Next stop in our tour of Berlin street art is Hallesches Tor. If you look around you’ll find graffiti on all corners but when you head to Mehringplatz, you’ll spot one of the most commercially successful artists of all time, Shepard Fairey. The artist, known in the street scene as Obey the Giant, named after the first character with whom he began his career, decorates one of the blind walls of the Mehringplatz with the large mural "Make Art Not War". It was completed in just two days.
"Hooded man and colorful birds" by Don John
In front of it, a flock of colorful and exotic birds emerge from the hood of a dark sweatshirt. A powerful mural signed by the Danish artist Don John. These are just two of the most known pieces here but look out for the up and coming artists and graffiti writers in the area, especially along the riverside!
"Yellow Man" by Os Gemeos
Onto the next stop is "Yellow Man". It was created back in June of 2014 by the duo of street artists from brazil called Os Gemeos. They have painted walls all over the world and they have, by far, one of the most recognizable aesthetics in the international street art scene, as they are famous for painting a sort of genderless yellow creatures. They made a big one at the intersection between Schlesisches Tor/Oppelner Strasse. So yeah, not sure what to say about this. Just a big yellow dreamy creature with checkered pants. You can’t miss it.
"Leviathan" by Blu
Not far from there, just off the Oberbaumbrücke, an absolute must-see in the Berlin street art world is the mural by the italian artist Blu. The piece is originally called "Backjump" or "Leviathan", but we could call it “man-eater”, or “really-big-scary-pink-monster-eating-a-white-little-human”. And make no mistake, when you go there you'll be looking at the work of an artist who is one of the few who has achieved a cult level of notoriety, and one that when he found out that in some parts of Berlin property developers were using his artworks to gentrify neighbourhoods, he took back control of it and simply erased the murals. One of the best to ever do it.
Urban Nation Museum
The first (and best) Street Art Museum in Berlin
OK this is not a wall per se but bear with me. It’s about a street art museum, a first of its kind, and a foundational player in today’s Berlin street art scene. The Urban Nation museum was built between 2016 and 2017 in the area of Schöneberg, On Bülowstraße 97 to be precise. A mainly residential neighbourhood with 19th century town houses, cafes and boutiques as well as being home to Berlin’s gay quarter and red-light district. The reason this has to be a stop in your exploration is because the museum offers 500 sqm of exhibition space and the main architectural concept envisioned for the museum was to create a building, which itself could be turned into a “work of art”. To do so they created a facade composed of modular sections serving as periodical canvas for artists, so that they can expose multiple artworks in mural form on the exterior surfaces of the building, while being able to preserve the mobile façade elements afterwards in the museum with the other more traditional artworks.
Pretty clever right? This element creates the idea that the “street” continues into the museum. The art pieces inside are also able to be simultaneously viewed from up close and further away thanks to a walkway that joins the exhibition spaces.
Generally, the museum exhibits 150 different art pieces selected by 10 curators, and all around the neighborhood there are a myriad of different street art pieces from famous to up-and-coming artists from all over the world. Best of all? The museum is free!
Berlin Wall Street Art
The East Side Gallery and the power of Berlin Street Art
Next stop is in the Friedrichshain district. Just between Berlin Ostbahnhof station and the Berlin Warschauer Straße subway stop. Here it’s where everything had a beginning, or rather an end, depending on the story we want to tell.
The East Side Gallery is the longest stretch of wall still standing. After the wall fell, street artists and graffiti writers from all over the world covered it with extraordinary murals, drawings, messages of peace, hope and freedom. The same wall that bisected the city for years has become an open-air gallery to be admired, over 1 km long and containing more than 100 murals, making it arguably the most famous spot for street art in Berlin.
Enjoy the walk and be patient with the tourists!
"Hanging Dead Animals" by ROA
A little further down, on Oranienstrasse, you can see the famous "Hanging Dead Animals" by ROA, a Belgian street artist known for the large scale murals depicting dead animals in black and white. It’s all about the transitory nature of life and our interaction with animals, not just about death, trust us.
Teufelsberg Street Art
Going West to see Berlin’s abandoned open-air street art gallery
The second to last stop of our guide to the best street art in Berlin is Teuflesberg. Originally intended to be a Nazi-era military college, this location was turned into a National Security Service listening station during the Cold War era. In the end, it has been abandoned for decades and like so many other locations throughout the city, street artists and graffiti writers were quick to take over the building and turn it into one of the most iconic street art spots in Berlin and Europe. Located just outside the city center on top of a hill, Teuflesberg is a great destination for a day trip that combines hiking, great views and art appreciation in, quite literally, what could be described as an open-air street art gallery.
Berlin street art hidden gems addresses:
Gerichstrasse 23. Walk into the industrial courtyards.
Lynarstrasse. Just outside Wedding S Bahn gas station to your left. Look up!
Walk on Warschauerstrasse towards Revaler Strasse. Look for an abandoned warehouses on the right. Walk in there!
Get off the subway on Heinrich Heine Strasse look left.
Other locations to find the best graffiti and street art in Berlin?
The last stop of this hitchhiker guide is on you. The spots and art pieces we have selected for this brief guide are only an infinitesimally small sample of what the Berlin street art scene has to offer. The graffiti and street art of the city is ever changing, as you might see something one day, and it will be gone another, as fast as new pieces go up, old pieces are covered up, weathered beyond recognition, vandalized, or even removed by the artists.
The street art movement stems from the revolutionary practices of those who identified with various subcultures linked to class, race, gender and from the socio-political fabric of the long history of this city and it deserves our attention. Right now, it’s become an ever more colorful scene, embraced by art institutions and consumer brands with such a variety of themes and meanings that our explanations will never be able to do justice to them. Remember, the streets of Berlin are not a blank canvas, the final meaning of the art work is a sum of the elements that were already there before, and for you to fully understand it, you have to be there yourself.
What we can say is to avoid “alternative” guided street art tours that some tourism agencies might offer you, as they give you a false sense of perception that street art and graffiti culture can be packaged and delivered to you in a pre-decided selection of roads to take and murals to snap a picture of.
This guide is brief because ultimately we want to instill in you the curiosity to discover what the street art in Berlin has to offer, by yourself. Let the streets dictate your next steps and let yourself be guided by the many writings and paintings on the walls that will reveal the story of the city to you. Look up and look down, for big-scale and for small-scale as you never know what you might find.
Next up in the world of street culture. Have a look at how multidisciplinary artist Futura went from graffiti writer to all around artist and designer. Check out our guide to Tokyo street art. Check what happens when a graffiti artist runs a hotel.
