Berlin is recognized as a world city of culture and creative industries. Numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation are representing the diverse heritage of the city. Many young people, cultural entrepreneurs and international artists continue to settle in the city. Berlin has established itself as a popular nightlife and entertainment center in Europe. See also: and
The expanding cultural role of Berlin was underscored by the relocation of several entertainment companies after 2000 who decided to move their headquarters and main studios to the banks of the River Spree. The city has a very diverse art scene and is home to over 300 art galleries. In 2005, Berlin was awarded the title "City of Design" by UNESCO.
Creative industries
Berlin is an important center of the European and German film industry. It is home to more than 1000 film and television production companies and 270 movie theaters. Also, 300 national and international co-productions are filmed in the region every year. The historic Babelsberg Studios and the production company UFA are located outside Berlin in Potsdam. The city is also home of the European Film Academy and the German Film Academy, and hosts the annual Berlin International Film Festival. Founded in 1951, the festival has been celebrated annually in February since 1978. With over 430,000 admissions it is the largest publicly attended film festival in the world.European Film Academy, www.europeanfilmacademy.org, Accessed 19 December 2006. See also: Berlin Film Festival, www.berlinale.de. Retrieved 12 November 2006.
Berlin is home to many international and regional television and radio stations. The public broadcaster RBB has its headquarters in Berlin as well as the commercial broadcasters Welt. German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle has its TV production unit in Berlin, and most national German broadcasters have a studio in the city.
Berlin has Germany's largest number of daily newspapers, with numerous local broadsheets (Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel), and three major tabloids, as well as national dailies of varying sizes, each with a different political affiliation, such as Die Welt, Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, and Die Tageszeitung. The Exberliner, a monthly magazine, is Berlin's English-language periodical focusing on arts and entertainment. Berlin is also the headquarters of the two major German-language publishing houses Walter de Gruyter and Springer, each of which publish books, periodicals, and multimedia products.
Industries that do business in the creative arts and entertainment are an important and sizable sector of the economy of Berlin. The creative arts sector comprises music, film, advertising, architecture, art, design, fashion, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, TV, radio, and video games. Around 22,600 creative enterprises, predominantly SMEs, generated over 18.6 billion Euro in total revenue. Berlin's creative industries have contributed an estimated 20% of Berlin's gross domestic product in 2005.
Nightlife and festivals
Berlin's nightlife has been described as one of the most diverse and vibrant of its kind. Throughout the 1990s, people in their twenties moved to the city with its affordable rents and made Berlin's club scene one of the premier nightlife destinations of Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many historic buildings in Mitte, the former city center of East Berlin, as well as in the neighboring locality of Prenzlauer Berg, were illegally occupied and re-built by young squatters and became a fertile ground for underground and counterculture gatherings. Since the early 1990s, Mitte and the eastern borough of Friedrichshain have been the home to many nightclubs, including techno clubs such as Tresor, E-Werk, KitKatClub or Berghain, some of which became known for the length of their parties.
In the western part of the city, the former West Berlin, SOUND, located from 1971 to 1988 in Tiergarten and today in Charlottenburg, gained notoriety in the late 1970s for its popularity with heroin users and other drug addicts as described in Christiane F.'s book Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.Christiane F.-Page, christianef. Retrieved 18 November 2006. The SO36 in Kreuzberg originally focused largely on punk music, but today has become a popular venue for many dances and parties. The LaBelle discothèque in Friedenau became widely known as the location of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.Compensating Victims of the La Belle Attack , German Embassy, Washington, D.C.. Retrieved 18 November 2006. Linientreu, another nightclub of the 1980s and 1990s, was located near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
The Karneval der Kulturen, a multi-ethnic street parade celebrated every Pentecost weekend,ENGLISH SUMMARY , www.karneval-berlin.de,. Retrieved 10 August 2008. and the Christopher Street Day are both supported by the city's government.Berlin for Gays and Lesbians, Berlin Tourismus Marketing GmbH. Retrieved 20 October 2006. Berlin is also well known for the cultural festival, Berliner Festspiele, which include the jazz festival JazzFest Berlin. Several technology and media art festivals and conferences are held in the city, including Transmediale and Chaos Communication Congress.
Berlin has a long history of gay culture and influence on popular entertainment, and according to some authors, in the 1920s the city was the Gay Capital of Europe. Today, the city has a huge number of gay clubs and festivals, such as Easter Fetish Week (Easter in Berlin), Christopher Street Day (Berlin Pride)—central Europe's largest gay-lesbian pride event celebrated on the last weekend of June—Folsom Europe and Hustlaball. Berlin is also leading Europe in the number of fetish clubs. "Easter in Berlin" and "Folsom Europe Berlin" are the biggest gay fetish festivals in Europe. Annual gay highlights in Berlin are also the gay and lesbian street festival in Berlin-Schöneberg (Lesbisch-schwules Stadtfest) and Kreuzberg Pride in June. The largest gay areas in Berlin are in Schöneberg close to Nollendorfplatz and in Prenzlauer Berg at the Schönhauser Allee subway station.
The "Down Under Berlin – Australian Film Festival" was founded in Berlin in 2011 as an event dedicated to the presentation of Australian and New Zealand film. The diverse festival, which is Europe's largest film festival on the film work of the two largest nations of the Australasia region, was held at Kreuzberg's "Moviemento" cinema in 2014. In 2015, Berlin will be the first host of the Lollapalooza festival in Europe.Lollapalooza Festival Berlin/Germany announced, 4 November 2014
Museums and galleries
Berlin is currently at the leading edge of the global contemporary art scene. There are over 600 art galleries in the city. It is estimated that 6,000 to 7,000 artists live in the city, with a quarter of them being from outside Germany. The beginnings of the modern boom in Berlin's art scene were during the 1990s. In 1995, a Berlin art fair, Art Forum Berlin, was first held. The Berlin Biennale for contemporary artists, held every June, began in 1998. Galleries have grown steadily in number since then. Galleries and artists' residences are mostly found in the neighbourhoods in Mitte (particularly along Auguststraße), Kreuzberg, Wedding, and Charlottenburg.
Berlin is home to 153 museums. The ensemble on the Museum Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is situated in the northern part of the Spree Island between the Spree and the Kupfergraben. As early as 1841, it was designated a "district dedicated to art and antiquities" by royal decree. Subsequently, the Altes Museum (Old Museum) in the Lustgarten displaying the bust of Queen Nefertiti,A 3,000-year-old smile , Expatica.Com. Retrieved 1 November 2006. the Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Pergamon Museum, and Bode Museum were built there. While these buildings once housed distinct collections, the names of the buildings no longer necessarily correspond to the names of their collections.
Apart from the Museum Island, there are many additional museums in the city. The Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) focuses on the paintings of the Old Masters from the 13th to the 18th centuries, while the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery, built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) specializes in 20th century European painting. The Hamburger Bahnhof, located in Moabit, exhibits a major collection of modern and contemporary art. In spring 2006, the expanded Deutsches Historisches Museum re-opened in the Zeughaus with an overview of German history through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The Bauhaus Archive is an architecture museum.
Berlin also hosts several institutions dedicated to photography and lens-based media. These include the Helmut Newton Foundation, which focuses on fashion, portrait, and documentary photography, and the Museum für Fotografie, which houses collections related to photographic history and practice. In the Charlottenburg district, C/O Berlin presents rotating exhibitions of international photography and visual media. In 2023, Fotografiska opened a major exhibition venue at Kunsthaus Tacheles, further strengthening Berlin’s position as an international centre for photographic culture.
The Jewish Museum has a standing exhibition on two millennia of German-Jewish history. The German Museum of Technology in Kreuzberg has a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The Museum für Naturkunde exhibits natural history near Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It has the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a brachiosaurus), and a preserved specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx.The World of Dinosaurs , Museum für Naturkunde. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
In Dahlem, there are several museums of world art and culture, such as the Museum of Asian Art, the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of European Cultures, as well as the Allied Museum (a museum of the Cold War) and the Brücke Museum (an art museum). In Lichtenberg, on the grounds of the former East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), is the Stasi Museum. The site of Checkpoint Charlie, one of the most renowned crossing points of the Berlin Wall, is still preserved and also has a museum, a private venture which exhibits comprehensive documentation of detailed plans and strategies devised by people who tried to flee from the East. The Beate Uhse Erotic Museum near Zoo Station claims to be the world's largest erotic museum.In Berlin, the Art of Sex, Washington Post. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
Performing arts
Berlin has evolved and earned its reputation as a leading European city with its high art scene and dynamic, cutting-edge performances. Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater in Mitte was built in 1849–50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944–45) due to the Second World War. The Volksbühne at Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913–14, though the company had been founded in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht, was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubühne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but in 1981 moved to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm. With a seating capacity of 1,895 and a stage floor of 2,854 square metres (30,720 square feet), the Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin Mitte is the largest show palace in Europe.