Fernsehturm Berlin — observation tower
Image by BernardoUPloud from Pixabay

Fernsehturm Berlin

Berliner Fernsehturm

  • 1 min read
  • 52.521° N 13.409° E

Interesting facts

  • The East German budget for the tower was about 33 million marks, but the final bill came to more than 132 million, four times the plan.
  • The sphere is 32 metres across, weighs about 4,800 tonnes and was assembled high above the city from 120 separate segments.
  • Anyone choosing the stairs instead of the lifts would face 986 steps up the concrete shaft.
  • The restaurant originally made one full turn an hour; since the renovation of 1997 it rotates twice as fast, once every 30 minutes.
  • A new antenna tip fitted in 1997 added three metres to the tower, bringing it from 365 to its present 368 metres.
  • The tower was first planned for south-eastern Berlin, but the site was dropped because it lay too close to the approaches of Schönefeld Airport.
  • Besides the Sputnik, its designers drew inspiration from the earlier television tower in Stuttgart.
  • When it opened in October 1969 it was the second-tallest television tower in the world, surpassed only by Moscow's Ostankino.
  • Berliners also mocked the tower as "St. Walter", a jab at the East German leader Walter Ulbricht, who inaugurated it.
  • During the 2006 FIFA World Cup the sphere was dressed with magenta pentagons to turn it into a giant football above the city.

Why it is worth it

The Fernsehturm rises 368 metres from the centre of Berlin, the tallest structure in Germany and visible from almost every district of the city. It was built between 1965 and 1969 by the East German government as both a broadcasting tower and a statement of socialist modernity, and its silhouette deliberately borrowed from the space age: the steel-clad sphere near the top was meant to recall Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Many architects worked on it, among them Hermann Henselmann, Jörg Streitparth, Fritz Dieter and Günter Franke.

The sphere produced an unintended joke. When the sun strikes its tiled stainless-steel skin, the reflection forms a bright Greek cross, and Berliners nicknamed it the "Pope's Revenge", a divine answer to a state that had stripped crosses from churches. After reunification the tower shed its political meaning and became a symbol of the whole city, appearing in the opening shot of countless films about Berlin; it has been a listed monument since 1979 and draws more than a million visitors a year.

Two lifts carry visitors up in about 40 seconds to the observation floor at about 203 metres, where on a clear day the view reaches some 42 km. A few steps above, a revolving restaurant turns slowly at 207 metres. The tower stands at the foot of Alexanderplatz, in the old Marienviertel, so the view from the top takes in both Berlin's oldest quarter and the broad socialist boulevards around it.

Getting there

The tower is in Mitte, the historic centre of Berlin, just southwest of Alexanderplatz station, which is served by U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines, trams and buses; the middle exit leads to the tower's entrance building. Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) is about 19 km to the southeast.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Berlin 6The Most Beautiful Places in Germany 87The Most Remarkable Monuments in Germany 5The Most Remarkable Modern Monuments 5The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Germany 7The Most Spectacular Modern Observation Towers 7The Most Spectacular Modern Viewpoints 9The Most Spectacular Observation Towers 12The Most Beautiful Modern Squares, Streets and Monuments 15The Most Beautiful Buildings in Germany 18The Most Spectacular Viewpoints 33The Most Beautiful Modern Buildings 50The Most Remarkable Monuments 56The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Fernsehturm in central Berlin was constructed between 1965 and 1969 by the government of the German Democratic Republic as both a functional broadcasting facility and a symbol of communist power.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

52.52083, 13.40944per Wikidata