The Underworld Tours of Berlin

By Lloyd C | Updated December 28th, 2011

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berlin germany view

In the Berlin underground train system, there’s a particular green door. Thousands of people pass it every day on the way to work, completely oblivious to what’s behind it.
But here, behind this green door, where no one would think otherwise, you can get a taste of Berlin’s bizarre recent history via the underworld tours of Berlin.

The Secret Door To World War II

ancient weathered door

At the station named Gesundbrunnen, you can take a tour through the green door and into the underground bunkers that were used to avoid air raids from the World Wars and onwards. The bunker rooms are dank and claustrophobic with low ceilings and thin air.
There are old tubes from the pneumatic dispatch system and remnants from underground breweries.
To the side of the room sits a railway cart that was once used by the Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) to move debris to special rubbish hills after WWII.

berlin transportation station

As you can imagine, a tour of the bunkers gives you a bitter taste of what it was like to live in East Berlin during the city’s most tumultuous times.

Underground Tours of Berlin

These underground tours of Berlin offer something quite unique.
As typical tourist attractions eventually get a little immune and tiring, this particular attraction remains quite mysterious and interesting to explore. Once we had heard of the Berliner Unterwelten (Berlin Underworld) Tours, we just knew it would be something fun and different to explore.

Berlin Underground

Fortunately, the tours run separately and in various languages, including English. They also offer separate tours that focus on various periods of Berliner history.

Breakdown of Tour Types:

  1. Tour 1 – Dark Worlds: A tour through a bunker from WWII
  2. Tour 2 – From Flak Towers to Mountains of Debris
  3. Tour 3 – Subways, Bunkers, Cold War: Security for civilians in the case of war
  4. Tour B – The Bunker Tour
  5. Tour F – The Fichtestrasse “Mother and Child Bunker”
  6. Tour M – Breaching the Berlin Wall: Subterranean escapes from East to West Berlin

Summary

If you happen to visit Germany, make sure you do one of the underground tours of Berlin. Chances are that you’ll want to do more than one. The volunteers who run the tours are super knowledgeable and they talk quickly and clearly and pack the tours with all of the gloomy and gory information.