Little did those military loving Prussians know in 1873 that their grandiose commemorative victory column would eventually become not only the finishing point for the now defunkt Love Parade but also the title of Berlin's most popular gay magazine.

Throughout the 1990s huge chunks of the Berlin Wall suddenly began to disappear, re-appearing in some of the most unusual places (including a men's bathroom in Las Vegas. Berlin's longest remaining chunk is now the East Side Gallery - the world's longest open-air gallery.

Berlin's most famous crossing point between East and West and a lasting symbol of the city's fragile Cold War relations. Checkpoint Charlie is commemorated today by an ersatz replica of the original American checkpoint and two historically inaccurate pictures of Soviet and American soldiers.

Back in 1987, a group of students excavated, with little more than their bare hands, the cellars of Berlin's former Gestapo and SS headquarters. The Topography of Terror is the fruit of their labour, an open-air exhibition documenting what happens when a totalitarian regime tortures its people to death for fun.

Every 10, 20 and 50 cent German Euro coin is minted with a picture of this big city gate on its reverse side. Stranded in a lonely no-man's land between 1961 and 1989 thanks to the East German government and their big nasty Wall, no other structure in Berlin better symbolises the temporary division of the city - and it's eventual re-union.

Berlin's ultra-controversial memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, 2,711 concrete blocks jutting off at offensive and suffocating angles. Co-incidentally only a stone's throw away from the site of Adolph Hitler's former underground lair, the Fuehrerbunker. There are many reasons why this plot of land is so controversial, firstly because it is where Nazi propoganda minister Joseph Goebbels used to have his underground bunker, secondly because the anti-graffiti paint used on the stones was made by the same company that produced the poison gas used in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Take Brewer's Berlin, take one of their legendary walking tours. The company has been running for over 20 years, led by the highly regarded elderly English gentleman Terry Brewer, recommended by every guide book under the sun, a tour with Brewer's is a quintessential Berlin experience. And seen as though they're all such lovely people, they'd decided to offer their walking tours for free, although it's always polite to tip the tour guide at the end.

The four museums, soon to become five with the re-opening on the Neues Museum, of Museum Island all offer free admission on Thursday evenings from 6pm to 10pm and over the next ten years are to be upgraded and connected by underground walkways. Berlin's state museums have had to come a long way since the Second World War, to re-establish themselves as world class centers of culture.

What is commonly refered to by Westerners as the Berlin Wall, was known to East Germans for 40+ years as the ‘anti-fascist protection barrier,’ erected to protect themselves from corrupt western power infringing on their socialist paradise. A paradise without bananas, not even in the supermarkets.

Despite the fact that it had been stood empty for over 12 years, nearly 2,500 Soviet soldiers gave their lives to take the German parliament building back in 1945. Ironic, or sad, then that the Reichstag building somehow managed to end up in the British sector of Berlin after the end of hostilities, only a few hundred metres from a huge mass grave housing the Soviet casualties (also in the British sector).

When everyone else is moaning about their first day at work after the weekend, you’re walking around a museum in the German capital established by two of the most famous names in the art collecting world.

Russian’s have chess, the North Koreans have synchronized gymnastics; the Chinese, Tai Chi, and the East Berliners have well…table tennis.