Berlin's Abandoned Airport Tempelhof

There is perhaps no other site which better embodies Berlin, in all of its contradictions, than Tempelhof. The abandoned airport, finally decommissioned in 2008, is laden with history, a memorial to both World War II and the Cold War. And it's hard to imagine anywhere else in the world where such a vast empty space – prime real estate about twice the size of Monaco – would escape redevelopment. But thanks to a 2014 referendum which overwhelmingly voted to preserve it, Tempelhofer Feld is today an immense green space, a playground where you'll encounter Berliners – on an average day around 10,000 of them – cycling, kite rollerskating, tending their urban gardens, barbecuing, playing football, or enjoying a round of mini-golf among improvised artworks... Find out more about this remarkable attraction, and learn how you can discover it for yourself during your stay in Berlin.

The story of Berlin and its airports is complicated. The new Berlin Brandenburg Airport to the city's south finally opened in late 2020, around nine years later than planned and absurdly over-budget, near the site of communist East Berlin's airport Schönefeld, which closed the same year. 2020 also saw the closure of West Berlin's Tegel Airport; its site is to be redeveloped as a climate-neutral residential and tech hub.

The endless meadows of Tempelhofer Feld, nowadays unmowed to attract bees, served as a military parade ground in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the early 1900s, some of the first pioneers of flight, among them Orville Wright, tested their prototypes here. The first scheduled flights took off from the newly built airport in 1923, but it was the Nazis who, in the 1930s, set about creating what architect Norman Foster would later dub "the mother of all airports". Conceived as a centrepiece of Hitler's gigantomaniacal "world capital city" of Germania, the grandiose, crescent-shaped stone terminal designed by Ernst Sagebiel stretched 1.2 kilometres on completion, making it one of the world's largest buildings at the time. It included 9,000 rooms and featured a huge floating roof over the tarmac. The outbreak of World War II prevented it from becoming even larger – the rooftop grandstands intended to seat tens of thousands were never built, and ironically the Nazis never used the terminal as an airport, but rather as a munitions plant using forced labour.

Remarkably, and unlike most of Berlin, the airport survived the war (and Hitler's last-ditch orders to destroy it), but a few years later Tempelhof, now situated in the Allied-occupied sector of Berlin, would become a flashpoint in the Cold War. When in June 1948 the Soviets imposed a complete blockade of West Berlin, the airport was the main destination for Allied planes flying supplies into the city, from food, clothing and medicines to coal and industrial machinery. At peak times, a "raisin bomber" took off or landed every minute, before the blockade was lifted 11 months later. The claw-shaped memorial to the Luftbrücke outside the terminal commemorates those who lost their lives in the Berlin Airlift.

In the early '50s, Tempelhof became West Berlin's civil airport, as well as functioning as a US air base. For many years, flying was the only secure way to travel from the city to West Germany without having to pass through communist East Germany. It became one of Europe's busiest airports, both a stamping ground for Cold War spies and a symbol of West Berlin's new-found glamour. With time, however, it no longer had the capacity to handle modern air travel, and Tegel took over the role of Berlin's main airport. The last flight took off from Tempelhof in 2008.

Today, Berlin's abandoned airport is used as a venue for events from trade fairs and exhibitions to music festivals and the Formula E motor race for electric cars.

You can't go inside Tempelhof Airport terminal on your own except during public events, but we recommend taking a tour of Berlin's abandoned airport. Guides lead you into the monumental 1960s check-in hall, now hauntingly empty but perfectly preserved, as if you've stepped back in time to the golden age of air travel. You'll also venture onto the tarmac and up to the vast roof – with a unique perspective on the Berlin skyline – as well as into eery WWII bomb shelters or the indoor basketball arena built for US air force personnel. You'll learn the answers to a host of questions about what happened to the old Berlin airport – how many underground floors there are, whether tunnels really lead into the city centre, and much more. 

Good to know: Even though specialised tours are typically conducted in German, there's no need to feel left out - a variety of English-language tours are also on offer. Tickets are readily available for purchase, either online or at the conveniently located visitor centre.

Platz der Luftbrücke 5, C2, 12101 Berlin. U-Bahn: Platz der Luftbrücke

Given its immense size, the abandoned airport field is easiest to explore on wheels, and the deserted runways are the ideal surface for bikes, e-scooters or rollerblades. The stylish Mercure Hotel Berlin Tempelhof in buzzing Neukölln is a great base if you'd like to be close by.

Good to know: You can rent a bike (or a go-kart) at the Fahrrad-Verleihstation Tempelhof, at the park entrance near the Tempelhof S- and U-Bahn station. There are also nextbike sharing stations along Tempelhofer Damm and Columbiadamm on the perimeter.

If you're walking, a fascinating route traces the airport's Nazi-era history, from the site of the former Columbia-Haus concentration camp, marked only by a small memorial (corner Golßener Str. & Columbiadamm), via the taxi way and the north runway to the south runway, then via St. Thomas Cemetery and a memorial to forced labourers to Hermannstrasse U-Bahn.

Most of all, we recommend enjoying this boundless, free-spirited space the way the Berliners do: grab a frisbee and a blanket, pack a picnic and perhaps a few beers, chill out and soak up the atmosphere, until the sun sets behind the disused Cold War radar tower.