Neukölln: Berlin Neighborhood Guide

Twenty years ago Neukölln was the district Berliners told you to avoid. Today it is where a large share of the city’s bars, galleries, studios, and new restaurants open first. The transformation ran north to south: it started in the Reuterkiez on the Kreuzberg border in the late 2000s and has been working its way down ever since. What keeps Neukölln interesting is that the transformation never finished — Arabic supermarkets, Turkish wedding-dress shops, hundred-year-old German corner pubs, and natural wine bars share the same blocks, and none of them is going anywhere.

The Reuterkiez and Weserstraße

The streets between the Landwehrkanal and Sonnenallee — the Reuterkiez — are the district’s established heart. Weserstraße is the bar street: a kilometer-plus of cocktail bars, wine bars, dives, and cafés that turn into bars after dark. Nothing here is glossy; the aesthetic is secondhand furniture and candlelight, and the quality is higher than the prices suggest.

The canal bank at Maybachufer hosts the Turkish market on Tuesdays and Fridays (see the Kreuzberg guide — the market is the border between the two districts and belongs to both). On summer evenings the grassy bank fills with people and the occasional unlicensed bar selling beer out of a cooler.

Tempelhofer Feld

Neukölln’s western edge is the former Tempelhof airport — closed in 2008 and turned over to the public as-is, runways and all. It is one of the largest open urban spaces in the world and the best free recreational space in Berlin: kite-surfers on the runways, community gardens, barbecue zones, birdwatching areas in the long grass, and an uninterrupted horizon you get nowhere else in the city. A 2014 referendum blocked development on the field, a decision Berliners defend fiercely.

Enter from the Neukölln side at Herrfurthstraße and you arrive through the Schillerkiez, the neighborhood that gentrified fastest precisely because of the field. Herrfurthplatz and the surrounding streets are now dense with cafés and restaurants; the contrast with grittier Hermannstraße one block east is instructive.

Sonnenallee

Sonnenallee is the center of Arabic Berlin — sometimes called the Arab Street — shaped by Lebanese, Palestinian, and more recently Syrian communities. It is the best food street in the city for the money. Shawarma and falafel at Azzam or Aldimashqi, knafeh and baklava at Damaskus Konditorei (founded by a Syrian family who rebuilt their Damascus pastry shop in exile), fresh juice stands, and grocery shops stocking half the eastern Mediterranean. Go hungry, order too much.

Rixdorf

Around Richardplatz, a few minutes from Karl-Marx-Straße, the old village of Rixdorf survives almost intact: a cobbled square, a working blacksmith, a 15th-century church, and low village houses founded by Bohemian Protestant refugees in the 1730s. It is one of the most surprising spots in Berlin — a genuine village center inside the city’s densest district. The Christmas market here (Alt-Rixdorfer Weihnachtsmarkt) is widely considered the city’s most charming.

Food and drink

Neukölln’s restaurant scene is the city’s most dynamic, and the list dates quickly — but some fixtures:

Lavanderia Vecchia (Flughafenstraße) — Italian set menus in a former laundry, a Neukölln institution.

Barra (Okerstraße) — Modern small plates and natural wine in the Schillerkiez, on most shortlists of Berlin’s best casual dining.

eins44 (Elbestraße) — Fine dining in a back-courtyard former distillery, the district’s quiet high end.

Café Rix (Karl-Marx-Straße) — Grand old café in a ballroom courtyard, good for breakfast away from the crowds.

For bars beyond Weserstraße: Klunkerkranich, the rooftop garden bar on top of the Neukölln Arcaden shopping mall parking deck, has the sunset view of the city and a line to match in summer. Tier and Velvet on Weserstraße both make serious cocktails with no reservation pretense.

Culture

Neukölln’s gallery and studio scene is dispersed through courtyards and former workshops rather than concentrated on one street — the annual 48 Stunden Neukölln festival in June opens hundreds of them for a weekend and is the best single introduction to the district’s art scene. Heimathafen Neukölln programs theater and concerts in a restored ballroom on Karl-Marx-Straße. The Neuköllner Oper does scrappy, inventive music theater that has nothing to do with the state opera houses — much of it accessible without fluent German.

The honest caveats

Hermannplatz and parts of Hermannstraße are rough around the edges, especially late; petty crime is the usual complaint. Karl-Marx-Straße is mid-renovation and has been for years. And the rent pressure the district’s popularity created is the defining local political issue — long-term residents being displaced by exactly the people reading neighborhood guides. Spend your money in the old businesses as well as the new ones.

When to come

Summer for Tempelhofer Feld and the canal; June for 48 Stunden Neukölln; Tuesday or Friday for the market; December for Rixdorf. Weserstraße works year-round — Neukölln’s bar scene was built for Berlin winters.