Where to stay in Berlin

This is the historic core and the case for it is simple: you walk out of the hotel into it. Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Unter den Linden, Gendarmenmarkt and the Holocaust Memorial are all within twenty-five minutes of each other on foot. Four U-Bahn lines and the S-Bahn cross the district, and Hauptbahnhof puts the airport express half an hour from your door.

The district is really two. West of Friedrichstrasse it is ministries, embassies and offices, and at 21:00 on a Tuesday there is nothing open and nobody on the pavement. Alexanderplatz is a 1970s concrete plaza with a wind problem, a cluster of two- and three-star chain hotels and the city's busiest pickpocket ground. The half worth booking is Spandauer Vorstadt: Rosenthaler Platz, Hackescher Markt, Oranienburger Strasse and the courtyards off Sophienstrasse, where people live and eat.

Book Mitte if the trip is short and the point is the sights. Check the address against a map before you pay: the same district name covers a street of restaurants and a street of government car parks. If the trip runs past four nights, the same money buys a bigger, quieter room two U-Bahn stops out and you lose ten minutes a day.

Prenzlauer Berg came through the war largely intact, so the Altbau facades people picture when they picture Berlin are here, street after street of them, around Kollwitzplatz, Helmholtzplatz and Kastanienallee. It is the calmest central district in the city and the one with the most children in it. Mauerpark, on the western edge, holds the Sunday flea market and the open-air karaoke that half the city turns up to.

What it does not have is a single thing you flew here to see. Every sight is a ride: the U2 from Eberswalder Strasse reaches Alexanderplatz in ten minutes and the M10 tram runs all night, but on foot Museum Island is thirty-five minutes downhill and thirty-five back. Nightlife is wine bars and a handful of pubs; for a club you go to Friedrichshain. And the district has not been cheap for fifteen years, which is the standing local complaint about it.

Book it for a longer stay, for a second visit, or with children. Stay south of Danziger Strasse if you want to keep the walk into Mitte under half an hour.

Friedrichshain is where the club map is. Berghain sits at its western edge, the RAW-Gelaende halfway along Revaler Strasse, the East Side Gallery along the river, and Simon-Dach-Strasse is an unbroken run of bars. Rooms cost less here than in any other district in this guide, hostels included, and Ostkreuz puts BER under thirty minutes away without a change.

The cost is your night. Simon-Dach-Strasse and Revaler Strasse are audible from the flats above them until dawn, seven days a week rather than at weekends. Warschauer Strasse station is the messiest interchange in Berlin after midnight, and it is where phones go missing. Rigaer Strasse, ten minutes north, is the front line of the city's long squat conflict, with police operations, burnt cars and reliable trouble on the night of 30 April.

If you book here, book north of Frankfurter Allee or east towards Boxhagener Platz, five minutes further out and a different volume of street. Ask for a courtyard-facing room and check the address against the bar streets before you pay.

Kreuzberg is two districts that share a name, and locals still insist on the difference. Kreuzberg 36, east of Mehringdamm, is Oranienstrasse, Kottbusser Tor, Goerlitzer Park and the Turkish market on the Maybachufer: the best street food in the city and the loudest streets in it. Kreuzberg 61, west of Mehringdamm, is Bergmannstrasse and Viktoriapark, middle-class, leafy and twenty minutes from Potsdamer Platz.

The downsides are specific and they are all in 36. Kottbusser Tor has an open drinking and dealing scene that does not stop at night. Goerlitzer Park is the city's best-known drug market; the police raid it and it stays what it is. Oranienstrasse is loud until 04:00 on a Wednesday, not just at weekends. The May Day riots start here, around Oranienstrasse and Mariannenplatz, and have done since the 1980s.

Book Bergmannkiez if you want to eat well and sleep, and Oranienstrasse only if you plan to be out until it closes. Either way you are ten minutes from Checkpoint Charlie on the U6 and thirty-five on foot from Museum Island.

Only the top of Neukoelln is of any use to you. The Reuterkiez and Weserstrasse, immediately south of the canal, are where Berliners under thirty actually drink, and where a room costs roughly half what Mitte charges. Tempelhofer Feld, a decommissioned airport you can walk and cycle across, runs along the western edge. The S45 from Neukoelln station reaches BER in about half an hour, the best airport connection of any district here.

Everything south of Karl-Marx-Strasse is a working residential district with no reason to bring a suitcase to it. The area also carries a reputation that Berlin's own guide calls sensationalised, and then qualifies: unemployment is higher, certain kinds of crime are more common, and the corridor from Hermannplatz to Kottbusser Tor is named specifically for robberies at night. There is a separate and more serious warning about antisemitic incidents.

Book within ten minutes of Hermannplatz or Rathaus Neukoelln, or do not book here at all. Fifty-five minutes on foot to Museum Island means you will use the U7 and U8 every day of the trip.

When the city was split, West Berlin built a centre of its own around Bahnhof Zoo and the Kurfuerstendamm, and that is what Charlottenburg still is: department stores, wide boulevards, Schloss Charlottenburg, the zoo, and by a distance the largest supply of mid-range and upscale hotel rooms in the city. Rooms are bigger than in the east, off-season rates fall a long way, and nothing keeps you awake.

Then 1990 happened and the centre of gravity moved back east. Museum Island, the Brandenburg Gate, the East Side Gallery, the clubs and every district people describe when they describe Berlin are twenty-five to thirty-five minutes away on the U2 or the S-Bahn, each way, every day. Museum Island is seventy-five minutes on foot, which means never. The Ku'damm itself is chain retail now; the interesting shops left for Mitte years ago. Bahnhof Zoo lost its long-distance trains, so arriving by rail means crossing the city first.

Book Charlottenburg for space, quiet and price, especially with children or on a longer stay. Do not book it expecting to walk out of the hotel into anything.

Schoeneberg has been the centre of gay Berlin since the 1920s, around Nollendorfplatz and Motzstrasse, and Christopher Isherwood wrote Goodbye to Berlin from a room on Nollendorfstrasse. Beyond that it is a dense residential district of stucco apartment houses, tree-lined avenues and large squares: Winterfeldtplatz holds the best Saturday market in the city, and the Akazienkiez a few streets south is where people who live here eat.

The trade is obvious. Nothing in the district is on anyone's list of things to see, and Museum Island is an hour on foot. What it does have is five U-Bahn lines and the S-Bahn: Potsdamer Platz is ten minutes, Mitte twenty, and KaDeWe is at the district border. Outside the bar streets around Nollendorfplatz it is quiet by 22:00, which is either the point or the problem depending on the trip.

Book it for a second visit, a longer stay, or any trip where a large room and a full night matter more than walking distance to the Brandenburg Gate.

Moabit is an island, ringed by the Spree and three canals, and it is where the cheap beds at Hauptbahnhof actually are. Motel One and Meininger sit at the station, which is genuinely useful: a late train or an early flight means a five-minute walk, and the FEX to BER leaves from downstairs. Turmstrasse, the district's own high street, has the Arminiusmarkthalle, an 1891 market hall with no tour groups in it.

The rest is the problem. The blocks between the station and the river are offices, rail land and building sites, and after 20:00 there is nothing open and almost nobody about. Museum Island is thirty-five to forty-five minutes on foot depending on which end you booked, and most of that walk is across empty ground. Berlin's own visitor guide groups Moabit with Wedding and Gesundbrunnen as places to treat with some caution at night.

Book it when the price gap is real and the trip is short: arriving late, leaving early, or using Berlin as a rail hub. For a first visit with sightseeing days, pay the difference and stay in Mitte.

Tiergarten is the Ortsteil west of Mitte, and it is mostly the park it is named after: 200 hectares of woodland between the Brandenburg Gate and the Zoo, with the Siegessäule in the middle. Around it sit the Kulturforum with the Philharmonie and the Gemäldegalerie, the embassy quarter along Tiergartenstraße, the Hansaviertel, and the western half of Potsdamer Platz.

As a base it is quietly excellent for a certain trip. You are 30 minutes on foot from Museum Island through the park, five minutes from the Philharmonie, and the hotels here are the large international ones with the space and the service that implies. Nothing in Berlin is prettier to walk home through in June.

The catch is that there is barely a street to live on. Outside Potsdamer Platz and the little Hansaviertel there are no corner shops, no bakeries and no bars - the district is park, embassies and cultural institutions, all of which close. Eating means Potsdamer Platz's mall or a taxi, and rates track the conference calendar rather than the season. Book it for the Philharmonie and the park; book Mitte or Kreuzberg for Berlin.

Wilmersdorf is the villa and apartment quarter below Kurfürstendamm: Fehrbelliner Platz, Bundesplatz, Volkspark Wilmersdorf and the Preußenpark where the Thai food market sets up at weekends. It is the part of west Berlin that stayed residential, and it is the single easiest place in the city to get a large, quiet, well-kept room for a middling price.

What you are buying is calm and space. The streets are wide and green, KaDeWe and the Ku'damm shopping are a ten-minute walk north, and the U7 and U9 put you in Kreuzberg or at Zoo station without changing. Families and long stays do well here, and so does anyone who has stayed in Mitte once and found it exhausting.

The honest problem is that nothing happens. Berlin's museums, its nightlife and everything anybody flies here for are 30 to 45 minutes away to the east, and the district's own evening amounts to a handful of restaurants and a very good Thai park in summer. Wikivoyage's own transport section is blunt about it: the stops here are not much use to a visitor. If your trip is sightseeing, this is a long U-Bahn ride twice a day.

Gesundbrunnen is the Ortsteil directly north of Mitte, up Brunnenstraße and Badstraße from the Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße. It has the cheapest rooms within walking distance of the centre, a station where the Ring, the north-south S-Bahn and the U8 all meet, and the Mauerpark on its eastern boundary.

The value is real and it is the reason to look here. Museum Island is 45 minutes on foot or four stops, Prenzlauer Berg is over the road, and you pay Neukölln prices while being closer in than Neukölln is. The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße - the one preserved stretch that still reads as a border rather than a souvenir - runs along the district's edge.

What you are trading is the street. This is a working immigrant district with the shabbiest high street in inner Berlin, the shopping is a station mall, and Wikivoyage names Wedding alongside Kottbusser Tor as where robbery risk is higher. Nothing about that makes it dangerous to sleep in; it does mean Badstraße at midnight is not Prenzlauer Berg, and the difference is the whole price gap.