The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is Germany's central memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and it occupies a whole city block in the heart of Berlin, between the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz, on land that once lay in the death strip of the Wall. Designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman and opened in May 2005, it consists of 2,711 grey concrete stelae arranged in a grid over undulating ground. At the edges the blocks are low, like benches; as you walk inward, the ground sinks and the stelae rise above your head, the noise of the city fades, and the narrow aisles produce a sense of isolation and disorientation that every visitor experiences differently. Eisenman deliberately gave it no single meaning, no names and no inscriptions, and the field is open at all hours, free, and accessible from every side. Beneath the south-eastern corner, the Information Centre gives the abstraction its human faces. Its rooms are among the most powerful exhibition spaces in Germany: the Room of Dimensions, with diaries, letters and last messages written by victims set into the floor; the Room of Families, which follows fifteen Jewish families from different parts of Europe; the Room of Names, where the names and short biographies of murdered Jews are read aloud in a cycle that would take years to complete; and the Room of Sites, which maps the camps and killing places across the continent. Entrance is free, though there is a security check and large bags are not permitted. The Information Centre is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 6pm, with last admission 45 minutes before closing, and the foundation offers a free public tour in English on the first Sunday of every month.

Visiting with respect: the field of stelae is a memorial, not a playground, and signs at the edges ask visitors not to climb, jump between or sit on the higher stelae, not to run, and to keep noise down. It is natural to walk in silence, and many people find that the experience only makes sense after twenty minutes among the blocks. Photography is allowed, but think carefully about what kind of photograph is appropriate. Plan the Information Centre for an hour or more; it is emotionally demanding, and the last rooms are hard to leave quickly. With children, the field itself can be explained simply, while the exhibition is better suited to teenagers.

Hours and practicalities: the field is open 24 hours a day. The Information Centre is closed on Mondays, apart from a few holiday Mondays, and over the Christmas holidays, and it may close early in extreme summer heat, as it did on two days in June 2026. Queues for the security check build in the middle of the day and at weekends, so morning visits are easier. Lockers are limited; travel light.

The wider landscape of remembrance: the memorial is one of several in the area. Across Ebertstrasse, in the Tiergarten, are the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe murdered under National Socialism, and nearby on Tiergartenstrasse is the memorial to the victims of the Nazi euthanasia programme. A short walk south-east, the Topography of Terror documents the institutions of the Nazi state on the site of the Gestapo headquarters. Seeing several of these together, ideally after the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, gives a deep sense of how Berlin has chosen to confront its past in the centre of the city rather than at its edges.