Brandenburg Gate → the Reichstag

This is the shortest walk on this site and the one where the distance matters least. Five hundred metres separate the Brandenburg Gate from the Reichstag, and for twenty-eight years that ground was inside the death strip of the Berlin Wall and could not be crossed at all.

The route

From the eastern face of the gate on Pariser Platz, walk north on Ebertstraße, keeping the Tiergarten on your left. After about 350 metres, turn right onto Scheidemannstraße and the Reichstag's western portico is directly ahead across the Platz der Republik.

It is about 500 metres, or 0.3 miles. The straight line is barely 400 metres; the difference is only that you cannot cut diagonally across the lawn in front of the building, which is fenced.

What the number is made of

Zero point three miles converts to roughly 640 steps — about five and a half minutes of walking. The ground is flat and paved throughout, and there is no meaningful elevation change anywhere on the route. This is, by a wide margin, the easiest of the twenty routes on this site.

Almost everyone walks further than the number suggests, because the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is 200 metres south of the gate and most people go there first. Adding that detour brings the round trip to roughly 1,700 steps.

Why 500 metres was once impassable

The Brandenburg Gate was completed in 1791 as a city gate on the western edge of Berlin, modelled on the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis. The Quadriga on top — a chariot drawn by four horses — was taken to Paris by Napoleon in 1806 and returned in 1814, at which point a Prussian iron cross was added to the goddess's staff, converting a peace monument into a victory monument.

After 1961 the gate stood inside the Wall's border strip. It was on East German territory but sealed off from both sides, visible to everyone and reachable by no one. That is the specific condition that made it the symbol it became: not a wall you could touch, but a monument stranded in the gap.

The Reichstag has its own layered history in the same short distance. It opened in 1894, burned in February 1933 in a fire the Nazi government used to justify the suspension of civil liberties, was captured by Soviet forces in 1945 in some of the most photographed fighting of the war, and then sat largely disused through the division of the city. Norman Foster's reconstruction, completed in 1999, added the glass dome above the debating chamber — a deliberate statement about visibility, with a public walkway spiralling above the elected chamber below.

The reconstruction also preserved something unexpected. Cyrillic graffiti left by Soviet soldiers in 1945 was found on the interior walls during the renovation, and after debate a substantial portion was conserved and left visible inside the working parliament building.

Walking it well

Follow the double line of cobblestones set into the pavement. It marks the course of the Wall and it crosses this route, so you can see exactly where the barrier stood in relation to both buildings. Most visitors walk over it without noticing.

The Reichstag dome is free to visit but requires registration in advance, usually several days ahead in summer. Do that before you make the walk, not after.

For a longer version, continue north-west from the Reichstag along the Spree to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, or south from the gate through the Memorial and on to Potsdamer Platz — either adds roughly a mile and 2,150 steps and both fill in the geography that the short walk skips.

Your step count, by height

Step length varies with height by more than 25 per cent across the adult range, so the single figure at the top of this page will not be right for everyone. Here is the same distance for a range of heights, using the standard estimate of 0.414 × height.

Your height	Est. step length	Steps for this route
1.55 m	0.64 m	752
1.65 m	0.68 m	707
1.75 m	0.72 m	666
1.85 m	0.77 m	630
1.95 m	0.81 m	598

These are estimates. If you want a figure that matches your own gait, our guide to measuring your stride length takes about five minutes.

Common questions

How long does the walk take?

Around five to six minutes. It is short enough that timing is not really a consideration.

Can I go inside the Reichstag?

The glass dome and roof terrace are open to the public free of charge, but registration is required in advance through the Bundestag's visitor service.

Where exactly did the Wall run?

A double row of cobblestones set into the modern pavement marks the line. It runs immediately west of the Brandenburg Gate and crosses Ebertstraße on this route.

Try your own route

Enter any two places into the step calculator to get a figure for a walk of your own, or browse all twenty routes and eight articles.