Nine days in Berlin, Dresden and Prague: rubble, reconstruction, and the one that came through

Three nights in Berlin, two in Dresden and three in Prague, on one railway line up the Elbe, with no car and nothing to book but two timed tickets.

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Length
9 days, 8 nights
Where you stay
Berlin, Dresden, Prague
Places
25 across 9 days
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These three cities sit in a line and are usually visited as three separate holidays, which is a waste of the railway between them. Berlin to Dresden is a shade over two hours. Dresden to Prague is two and a quarter, and the second half of it runs through the Elbe sandstone gorge with the river on one side and pine-covered cliffs on the other, which is the finest cheap train ride in central Europe.

What links them is what happened in the middle of the last century and what each one did about it afterwards. Berlin rebuilt itself twice, badly and then argumentatively, and left the scars deliberately visible. Dresden burned in a single night in February 1945 and then spent sixty years putting its baroque centre back stone by stone, some of the stones the original ones, black with fire. Prague was never seriously bombed, so its Gothic, Renaissance and baroque layers are simply still there, which is exactly why it is full.

Nine days, three beds, two train journeys. Three nights in Berlin, which is not enough for Berlin and is enough to see what it is about. Two in Dresden, which is the right number. Three in Prague, arriving in the afternoon rather than at midnight.

Highlights

  • The Reichstag dome at dusk, free, with the chamber visible through the floor below you
  • A grid of grey stelae on sloping ground, one block south of the Brandenburg Gate
  • A preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall on Bernauer Strasse, death strip and all, not the painted souvenir version
  • The Sistine Madonna in Dresden, and the two bored angels at the bottom of it that ended up on every fridge magnet in Europe
  • The two hours of Elbe gorge between Bad Schandau and Decin, worth a window seat on the left
  • Prague castle at opening time, then the same hill again at dusk from the bridge below it

Where to stay

Berlin, three nights

Berlin is not a beautiful city and it does not try to be. It is a large, flat, cheap capital with enormous gaps in it, and the gaps are the point: the cleared ground where the Gestapo headquarters stood, the double line of cobbles in the road where the Wall ran, the field of grey blocks a hundred metres from the Brandenburg Gate.

Three nights buys you the government quarter, one day on Museum Island and one walking the Wall and the Nazi period rather than reading about them. It does not buy you Potsdam, the lakes, or a fair share of the nightlife, and anybody who wants those should take five nights and start here. Stay in Mitte to walk to everything, or in Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg to pay less and eat considerably better.

Dresden, two nights

By train from Berlin, Berlin Central Station to Dresden Central Station, about 165 km.

On the night of 13 February 1945 the centre of Dresden was destroyed by fire in a matter of hours. What stands there now is a reconstruction, finished in stages between the 1950s and 2005, and the city is completely open about it: the Frauenkirche is speckled with black stones salvaged from its own rubble, and you can see exactly which ones they are.

Two nights is right. The old town is small enough to walk across in ten minutes and holds one of the great picture collections in Europe plus a treasury of Saxon royal excess, and there is nothing to be gained by rushing them. Cross the river in the evening: the Neustadt, which is not new, took less damage and is where Dresden goes out.

Prague, three nights

By train from Dresden, Dresden Central Station to Praha hlavní nádraží, about 117 km.

Prague came through the war with its centre intact, which is the single fact that explains both its beauty and its crowds. A Gothic layer, a Renaissance layer and a baroque layer are all still standing where they were put, and several million people a year come to look at them.

Three nights, arriving in the afternoon, gives you the castle at opening rather than at noon, a morning in Josefov instead of an hour, and one evening on the bridge when the day trippers have gone. Sleep on the Old Town side to walk everywhere, or in Vinohrady to pay Czech prices and eat where Czechs eat.

Day by day

Day 1 in Berlin

Unter den Linden, the Holocaust memorial and the Reichstag dome

Start at the gate, because everything in this part of Berlin is measured from it. Twelve sandstone columns, a chariot on top, and a hundred and thirty years of being used as a backdrop by whoever happened to be in charge, ending with a wall running past it for twenty-eight years.

Then walk one block south, into a field of grey concrete blocks laid out on a grid on sloping ground. There is nothing to read at street level and no explanation given. The information centre underneath is where the names are, and it is free, and half an hour in it is enough to change the rest of the day.

Finish at the parliament. The dome is glass, it spirals, and it sits directly above the debating chamber so that from the walkway you look down through the floor at the seats. Book the slot before you leave home and take the last one of the evening, when the city comes up lit around you.

  1. 14:30

    Brandenburg Gate

    Historic

    Berlin's only surviving city gate, put up in 1791 by Carl Gotthard Langhans and modelled on the entrance to the Athenian acropolis. It stood in the death strip from 1961 to 1989, reachable from neither side. Free, always open, always full.

  2. 15:15

    Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

    Historic

    Peter Eisenman's field of 2,711 concrete stelae, opened in 2005, deliberately without inscription or symbol. Walk into the middle where the blocks rise over your head. The underground information centre is free and takes about forty minutes.

  3. 17:00

    Coffee near Potsdamer Platz

    Eat

    Sit down for half an hour before the Reichstag slot. Anywhere off the square rather than on it, where you are paying for the glass towers.

  4. 18:30

    Reichstagsgebäude

    Architecture

    The German parliament, with Norman Foster's glass dome added in 1999 over the rebuilt chamber. Free, but only with an online registration made in advance and matched to your passport. The last slots of the evening get the best light.

  5. 20:30

    Dinner in Mitte

    Eat

    Walk east along the Spree towards the Friedrichstrasse end. The Vietnamese places in the side streets north of Oranienburger Tor are a Berlin institution and cost about a third of what the riverside terraces do.

With more time: If you land in the morning rather than the afternoon, the Tiergarten starts at the gate and runs west for three kilometres, and walking its paths is the cheapest way to get over a flight.

Day 2 in Berlin

Museum Island, Nefertiti and the cathedral dome

Five museums on one island in the Spree, built over a hundred years from 1830 as a deliberate Prussian statement, wrecked in the war and still being put back. Walk the outside first: the colonnades, the courtyards and the Lustgarten make sense of what is where, and it takes twenty minutes.

Then pick one museum and do it properly rather than three at a trot. The Neues Museum is the one to pick. It holds the painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, carved around 1345 BC, in a room of her own, and the building around her is itself the exhibit: David Chipperfield rebuilt it between 1997 and 2009 without disguising a single war wound, so shrapnel scars and missing frescoes are simply left where they are.

Finish across the road at the cathedral. It is Wilhelmine, enormous, and only a century old, and the reason to go in is the two hundred and seventy steps up to the walkway around the dome, which puts you level with the television tower and looking straight down the island.

  1. 09:30

    Museumsinsel

    Landmark

    The island in the Spree carrying five state museums, a UNESCO site since 1999 and permanently half under scaffolding. Walk the colonnade courtyard and the Lustgarten first to work out the geography.

  2. 10:30

    Neues Museum

    Culture

    Egyptian and prehistoric collections in a building rebuilt by David Chipperfield with every war scar left visible. Nefertiti is upstairs in a domed room on her own. Book a timed slot online in summer to skip the ticket queue.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on Hackescher Markt

    Eat

    Ten minutes north of the island, and the courtyards behind the square are worth the walk on their own. Avoid the tables directly on the tram tracks.

  4. 14:30

    Berliner Dom

    Religious

    The Hohenzollern court church of 1905, flattened in 1944 and finished again in 1993. Pay to go in and climb to the dome walkway, which is the best cheap view in central Berlin. About 270 steps and no lift.

With more time: With more time on the island, the Alte Nationalgalerie holds the German nineteenth century and is rarely busy, and the Bode-Museum at the northern tip has Byzantine ivories and almost no visitors at all. The Pergamon Museum is shut for a long rebuild and will not reopen in full this decade.

Day 3 in Berlin

The Gestapo headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie and the real Wall

One day on the twentieth century, walked in the order it happened. Start on the empty block where the Gestapo and the SS ran the country from 1933 to 1945. The buildings are gone, the cellars are exposed, and the open-air documentation along the excavated foundations is free and unsparing. Ninety minutes, and take them.

Checkpoint Charlie is four streets away and is worth exactly ten minutes and no money. The guardhouse is a replica, the men in uniform posing for photographs are actors, and the museum beside it charges a great deal for a poor exhibition. Go, look, understand where the line ran, and leave.

Then take the U-Bahn north to Bernauer Strasse, where a full section of the border has been kept as it stood: outer wall, patrol road, lamps, sand, inner wall. This is the one that lands. The street had apartment blocks whose front doors opened into the West and whose windows were bricked up in 1961, and the memorial marks where people jumped.

  1. 09:30

    Topography of Terror

    Culture

    Free open-air and indoor documentation centre on the site of the Gestapo and SS headquarters, with the excavated cellars along Niederkirchnerstrasse and a long stretch of original Wall above them. Allow ninety minutes and read the outdoor panels.

  2. 11:30

    Checkpoint Charlie

    Other

    The Cold War's most famous crossing, and the only one foreigners could use. American and Soviet tanks faced each other 200 m apart here in October 1961. What stands today is a reconstruction with actors in it, so look at the line in the road and walk on.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch in Kreuzberg

    Eat

    Ten minutes south and a different city: Turkish grills, Syrian bakeries and cheap lunch menus around Moritzplatz and Oranienstrasse.

  4. 14:30

    Berlin Wall Memorial

    Historic

    The only place the border survives complete, on Bernauer Strasse: outer wall, death strip, patrol road and watchtower over 1.4 km, with a free visitor centre and an observation deck. The rest of the Wall in Berlin is fragments and souvenirs.

With more time: If the day has left you wanting more of it rather than less, the Jewish Museum in Kreuzberg is twenty minutes from Checkpoint Charlie and needs three hours, and Daniel Libeskind's building does half the work before you read a single caption.

Day 4 in Dresden

The train to Dresden, and the first walk round the old town

A mid morning EuroCity gets you to Dresden in time for lunch. The line runs south across flat Brandenburg sand and then into Saxony, and Dresden Hauptbahnhof is a quarter of an hour on foot from the old town or four minutes on a tram.

What you walk into is a reconstruction, and knowing that makes it better rather than worse. Start at the church in the middle of the Neumarkt. It collapsed two days after the firestorm, lay as a heap of stones through forty years of East German rule, and was put back between 1994 and 2005 using every original stone that could be identified. Those are the black ones, and they are scattered across the sandstone like a photograph of the damage.

Then the long porcelain mural running past the palace, and the terrace above the river at the end of it. The terrace was called the balcony of Europe when that meant something, and it is where the city takes its evening walk.

  1. 09:30

    Train to Dresden

    Travel

    Two hours and a quarter, roughly every two hours, main station to main station. Book a Sparpreis in advance and reserve a seat on summer weekends.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch on the Neumarkt

    Eat

    Drop the bag first. The square in front of the church is all terraces and all priced for the view; one street back is half the money.

  3. 14:30

    Frauenkirche

    Religious

    Destroyed in February 1945, left as rubble for half a century and rebuilt by 2005 with its own salvaged stones set back in place, which is why the walls are piebald. The golden cross on the dome was made in London and paid for by Coventry. Climbing to the dome platform costs about twelve euros.

  4. 16:00

    Fürstenzug

    Other

    A hundred metres of Saxon rulers on horseback along the wall of the palace stables, made of roughly 23,000 Meissen porcelain tiles in 1907 and almost untouched by the firestorm. Free, outdoors, and there is exactly one woman in it.

  5. 16:45

    Brühlsche Terrasse

    Leisure

    Five hundred metres of raised terrace above the Elbe, public since 1814, with the old town at your back and the river meadows opposite. Come at the end of the afternoon and walk it slowly.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner across the Augustusbruecke

    Eat

    The north bank came through the raid far better and is where the city eats and drinks now. Ten minutes on foot from the terrace, and half the price of the Neumarkt.

Day 5 in Dresden

The Zwinger, the Old Masters and the Green Vault

One day, three collections, all within four hundred metres of each other, and none of them rushed.

The Zwinger first, because it is free to walk into and best early. It is not a palace but a party venue, built between 1710 and 1728 for a Saxon elector with money and appetites, an open courtyard ringed by pavilions with a crown gate at one end and fountains and stone nymphs everywhere you look.

Then the picture gallery inside it, for Raphael's Sistine Madonna. The painting is famous and the two chin-on-hands cherubs at the bottom of it are more famous still, having escaped onto every mug and tea towel in Europe. Vermeer's girl reading a letter hangs nearby, restored in 2021, and the restoration uncovered a large painted cupid on the back wall that somebody had deliberately covered over.

Afternoon in the treasury, which is Augustus the Strong's private hoard laid out as he arranged it in 1733: a cherry stone carved with a hundred and eighty faces, a whole miniature court of Mughal India in gold and enamel, and the green diamond it is named for. Jewels were stolen from here in a break-in in November 2019 and most of them came back, damaged, at the end of 2022.

  1. 09:30

    Zwinger Palace

    Historic

    A baroque pleasure courtyard of 1710 to 1728, with Permoser's stonework, a pavilion of Meissen porcelain bells that chime through the day, and the crown gate everybody photographs. The courtyard is free and open all day.

  2. 10:45

    Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

    Culture

    Around 700 paintings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century in the Zwinger's Semper wing: Raphael's Sistine Madonna, Vermeer's girl at the window, Cranach, Rubens and a strong Dutch room. Two hours minimum, and it is quiet before eleven.

  3. 13:15

    Lunch on the Theaterplatz

    Eat

    Between the opera house and the river, or duck into the arcades behind the palace where the lunch menus are meant for people who work here.

  4. 15:00

    Grünes Gewölbe

    Culture

    The Saxon treasury in the royal palace, in two halves on two tickets. The Historic Green Vault keeps the 1733 arrangement of mirrored rooms and needs a timed ticket booked days ahead; the New Green Vault shows the same craft object by object and is easy to get into.

With more time: The opera house on the Theaterplatz gives daytime guided tours between rehearsals, and if there is an evening performance the cheap seats with a restricted view cost less than dinner. Otherwise cross the river again: the Neustadt has a nineteenth-century dairy shop tiled floor to ceiling in hand-painted Villeroy and Boch, which sounds like nothing and is unforgettable.

Day 6 in Prague

Up the Elbe gorge to Prague, and Wenceslas Square in the evening

The finest stretch of railway on the whole trip. Leave Dresden mid morning and sit on the left. After Bad Schandau the railway is pinned between the river and the sandstone, the cliffs come down to the water on both sides, castles appear on top of them, and somewhere in the middle of it you cross into the Czech Republic without the train slowing down.

Prague main station is a five minute walk from the top of Wenceslas Square, which is not a square but a boulevard six hundred metres long running downhill from the National Museum. Everything that happened to this country in the last century happened on it. Soviet tanks parked here in August 1968. A student called Jan Palach set himself alight at the top of it in January 1969 and died three days later. Hundreds of thousands of people filled it in November 1989 and rattled their keys until the government resigned.

The revolution itself started a few streets west, on Narodni, where riot police cornered a student march on 17 November 1989 and beat it. The memorial there is a small bronze plaque of hands in an arcade, easy to walk past, and always has candles under it.

Then the Old Town Square at the end of the day, when the tour groups have gone and the light is on the Tyn church spires.

  1. 10:00

    Train to Prague

    Travel

    Dresden Hauptbahnhof to Praha hlavni nadrazi, two and a quarter hours, every two hours. Reserve a seat and take the left side facing forward for the gorge.

  2. 13:00

    Late lunch near the station

    Eat

    Drop the bag, then eat in Vinohrady above the station rather than in the arcades below it. Prices fall by half in three hundred metres.

  3. 14:30

    Wenceslas Square

    Architecture

    A wide sloping boulevard rather than a square, running down from the National Museum, and the stage for 1968, 1969 and 1989. The plain memorial to Jan Palach and Jan Zajic is in the pavement below the horseman at the top. Ignore the casinos.

  4. 15:30

    Velvet Revolution Memorial

    Historic

    A brass plaque of raised hands under an arcade on Narodni, marking where riot police cornered and beat a student demonstration in November 1989, eleven days before the government fell. There are usually candles.

  5. 17:30

    Old Town Square

    Architecture

    The Gothic, Renaissance and baroque middle of the city, listed by UNESCO in 1992, with the Hus monument of 1915 in the centre. Come back after the day trippers leave and the square is a different place.

  6. 19:30

    Dinner off the square

    Eat

    Anywhere two streets back. The rule in the Prague old town is that a menu in six languages outside the door means you are paying triple for worse food.

With more time: If the train gets in early, the astronomical clock on the old town hall performs on the hour, takes under a minute and disappoints everybody. Climbing the tower it is attached to does not, and the queue for the lift is short in the evening.

Day 7 in Prague

The castle hill, St Vitus and the bridge at dusk

Be at the castle gates when they open. This is the most visited thing in the country and the difference between nine in the morning and eleven is the difference between a hill and a scrum. Tram 22 drops you at the top so you can walk down afterwards rather than up.

It is less a castle than a walled quarter, courtyards and palaces and gardens covering seven hectares, and the ticket you want is the short circuit rather than the long one. In the middle of it stands the cathedral, begun in 1344 by Charles IV, abandoned for centuries and only finished in 1929, which is why the east end is fourteenth century and the west front is younger than the aeroplane. Look for the Mucha window in the north aisle, art nouveau glass from 1931 in a Gothic frame.

Spend the afternoon walking down instead of taking the tram: Nerudova drops steeply into the Lesser Town past baroque house signs that worked as addresses before numbers did.

Then hold the last hour of daylight for the bridge. At noon it is shoulder to shoulder. At dusk the crowd thins, the thirty statues go black against the sky, and the castle you spent the morning in comes up floodlit on the ridge behind you.

  1. 09:00

    Prague Castle

    Nature

    The seat of Czech rulers since the ninth century and of the president now, a walled quarter of courtyards, palaces and gardens rather than a single building. Go at opening time. The guard changes hourly and at noon there is a fanfare in the first courtyard.

  2. 11:15

    St. Vitus Cathedral

    Religious

    Begun in 1344 and not finished until 1929, which is visible from thirty metres away. Charles IV and a dozen other Bohemian kings are in the crypt, the crown jewels are behind a door with seven locks, and the Mucha window of 1931 is in the north aisle.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch in the Lesser Town

    Eat

    Walk down Nerudova rather than riding the tram, and stop when the streets flatten out. The pubs in the lanes behind Malostranske namesti still charge Czech prices.

  4. 19:00

    Charles Bridge

    Architecture

    Sixteen arches, 516 metres, begun in 1357 and the only crossing in Prague until 1841. The thirty baroque statues along the parapet are copies; the originals are in museums elsewhere in the city. Come in the last hour of light.

With more time: Between lunch and the bridge, Petrin hill rises straight above the Lesser Town with a funicular running up it and an iron lookout tower of 1891 at the top that is a fifth the height of the Eiffel Tower and stands on ground high enough to beat it.

Day 8 in Prague

Josefov: the cemetery, the names and the oldest synagogue in Europe

A morning in about three streets, and the heaviest hours of the nine days. Prague's Jewish quarter was cleared and rebuilt as art nouveau apartment blocks around 1900, and six synagogues, a town hall and the cemetery were left standing in the middle of it. They survived the war because the occupiers intended to keep them as a museum to a people they were in the process of destroying.

Start in the Pinkas synagogue, where the interior walls are covered in hand-painted names, 77,297 of them, every Czech and Moravian Jew known to have been murdered. The Communist authorities closed the building in 1968 and let the plaster rot; the names had to be painted again from scratch in the 1990s. Upstairs are children's drawings from Terezin.

The cemetery is next door and is entered through it. Twelve thousand headstones on a plot the size of a large garden, burials stacked twelve deep because the community was not allowed to expand the ground, and the earth heaved up between them. Rabbi Loew, to whom the Golem story is attached, is about halfway round.

Finish at the Old-New synagogue across the street, finished around 1270 and still holding services, which makes it the oldest working synagogue in Europe. It is small, dark, and completely unlike the others.

  1. 09:30

    Pinkas Synagogue

    Religious

    The walls carry the names of 77,297 Czech and Moravian Jews killed in the Holocaust, hand-painted, with the camps listed in larger letters at the front. The upstairs room holds drawings made by children at Terezin. Take the ticket that covers the whole quarter.

  2. 10:45

    Old Jewish Cemetery

    Historic

    In use from the fifteenth century to 1787, with over 20,000 people buried in about twelve layers because the ghetto was never allowed more ground. Rabbi Loew's tomb is halfway round the path and is covered in pebbles and paper wishes.

  3. 12:00

    Old-New Synagogue

    Religious

    Finished around 1270, Europe's oldest synagogue still in regular use, with five-ribbed vaults built that way so the ribs never form a cross. The Golem is supposed to be in the attic, which has no stairs. Separate ticket from the rest of the quarter.

  4. 13:00

    Lunch on Parizska or behind it

    Eat

    Parizska itself is the most expensive street in the country and is lined with luxury boutiques. Walk one block east for lunch at a third of the price.

With more time: Letna park on the bluff north of the river has the best view back over the bridges and a beer garden under the trees, and the giant metronome up there stands on the plinth where a colossal statue of Stalin stood until it was dynamited in 1962.

Day 9 in Prague

Cubist coffee, then the airport

One last hour, and a good one. Prague did something with cubism that nobody else did: instead of stopping at painting, Czech architects built it, and between 1911 and 1914 they put up cubist apartment blocks, lamp posts and cafes across the city.

The House of the Black Madonna is the best of them, a department store of 1912 by Josef Gocar with a baroque statue of the Virgin kept on the corner from the building it replaced. The cafe on the first floor was ripped out under Communism and put back from photographs in 2005, down to the angled chandeliers and the brass rails, and it serves a proper Czech breakfast.

Then the museum upstairs, which is small, takes forty minutes, and is the only museum devoted to it anywhere. After that, the airport bus from Namesti Republiky or the metro to the main station.

  1. 09:00

    Grand Cafe Orient

    Landmark

    The first-floor cafe in Gocar's cubist department store, opened in 1912, closed for eighty years and rebuilt from photographs in 2005. Coffee, cake and a good breakfast under cubist chandeliers, at ordinary Prague prices.

  2. 10:15

    Museum of Czech Cubism

    Architecture

    Cubist furniture, ceramics and glass in the building that started it, Josef Gocar's department store of 1911 to 1912. Forty minutes is enough and there is nothing else like it in Europe.

  3. 12:00

    To the airport or the station

    Travel

    Airport Express buses run from the main station and take about forty minutes; allow an hour in the afternoon. For onward trains, Vienna is four hours south and Berlin four and a quarter back the way you came.

Before you go

The two train journeys

Berlin to Dresden takes two hours and a quarter on a EuroCity, roughly every two hours, from Berlin Hauptbahnhof to Dresden Hauptbahnhof. Book it as a Sparpreis a few weeks out and it costs under twenty euros; walk up on the day and it is about forty.

Dresden to Prague is the same EuroCity continuing south, two hours and fifteen minutes, and it is the one to reserve a seat on. From Bad Schandau the line runs beside the Elbe through the sandstone country on both sides of the border, and the good views are on the left going south. Czech Railways sells the ticket cheaply if you book direct, and the same train also carries a dining car that is better than it needs to be.

Both journeys leave from a main station in the middle of one city and arrive at a main station in the middle of the next, so no taxi is needed at either end. Nothing on this trip requires a car and parking in all three centres is deliberately awful.

Money, and the border

Germany is on the euro and the Czech Republic is not, and has no plans to be. Prague runs on the koruna, cards work almost everywhere, and the exchange booths in the old town are a well-documented rip-off. Use a bank machine and refuse the machine's offer to convert for you.

The border is inside the Schengen area, so the train does not stop for it and nobody checks anything. Carry your passport anyway, because the police do occasionally spot-check the Dresden to Prague train.

The two things to book before you leave

The Reichstag dome in Berlin. It is free, and it requires an online registration with your passport details, usually two or three weeks ahead in summer. Without one you will be turned away at the gate on Scheidemannstrasse and there is no queue to join instead.

The Historic Green Vault in Dresden, which sells timed tickets in limited numbers and sells out days in advance. The New Green Vault next door is a separate ticket, easier to get, and covers the same treasury with less ceremony. Everything else on these nine days takes walk-ins.

When to come

May, June and September. Long evenings, terraces open, and Prague busy rather than solid. Late August is the worst of it in Prague, and the Charles Bridge at noon in August is a lesson in what not to do.

December has a real argument. All three cities run Christmas markets, Dresden's has been running since 1434 and claims to be the oldest in Germany, and a January morning is the closest anyone gets to having the bridge to themselves. It is also cold enough to hurt.

Eating

Berlin is the best eating city of the three by a distance and almost none of it is German. Vietnamese in Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte, Turkish in Kreuzberg and Neukoelln, and a doner kebab that is genuinely a Berlin invention rather than an imported one.

Dresden and Prague are meat, dumplings and beer, done well and cheaply once you are four streets from the main square. In Prague, order a half litre, put a beermat over the glass when you have had enough, and expect the bill to be totalled on a paper slip at your elbow.

Four hundred kilometres, two train tickets, three cities that were on three different sides of the same century. Berlin argues with its history in public, Dresden has rebuilt its way through it, and Prague, which came through more or less intact, spends its days being looked at.

Go in May or September, book the Reichstag and the Green Vault before you leave, and sit on the left out of Dresden.

Go deeper on one city

Each of these covers a single stop on this route in its own right.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Which direction should I go, north to south or south to north?
South, as written here. Berlin is the hardest of the three to arrive in cold and the easiest to fly into, Dresden works as a two-night pause in the middle, and Prague is a better place to finish than to start because it is the one you will not want to leave in a hurry. The gorge scenery on the Dresden to Prague leg also sits on the left going south, which is the river side.
Is three nights enough for Berlin?
For a first visit alongside two other cities, yes. Three nights covers the government quarter, one museum day and one day on the Wall and the Nazi period, which is what most people come for. It leaves out Potsdam, Charlottenburg, the lakes and the clubs. If those matter, add two nights at the start rather than taking them from Dresden or Prague.
Do I need to book the trains in advance?
Not to travel, but yes to save money. Both legs have walk-up fares that are roughly double the advance price, and both are single trains every two hours rather than a frequent service, so a missed connection costs you a couple of hours. Reserve a seat on the Dresden to Prague leg in summer; it fills.
Is Dresden worth two nights, or is one enough?
Two. One night gives you an afternoon and a morning, and the picture gallery and the treasury each want half a day on their own. Two nights also buys the evening across the river in the Neustadt, which is where the city stops being a museum.
Can I copy this and change it?
Yes. Every day here is a starting point, and the usual edits are adding a couple more nights in Berlin at the front, swapping the Dresden picture gallery for a day walking in the sandstone hills an hour upriver, or extending past Prague to Vienna, which is four hours further south on the same railway.