Berlin Heritage Cycle Tour

A cultural and historical bike tour between villas and visions

This exclusive bike tour combines exercise with depth: Eckart Granitza guides you with subtle humor and narrative flair to historical sites full of splendor and abysses. Having grown up in Berlin-Wannsee, he knows this area not only from history books, but also from lived experience. With his in-depth knowledge, he impressively traces the history of glamour, exile, power, and decline.

Start

The meeting point is the current S-Bahn station and former GDR control station Griebnitzsee. From here, you will cycle with Eckart Granitza through the villa colony of Neubabelsberg, where Jewish bankers and industrialists once lived. After the residents were expelled and expropriated, Nazi leaders such as Joseph and Magda Goebbels and film stars such as Marika Rökk moved into the villas. During the Potsdam Conference, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Harry Truman resided here.

Architecture & Icons

Eckart Granitza will show you the impressive villas designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hermann Muthesius, and Gustav Lilienthal. Today, these dream homes are inhabited by well-known figures, including SAP founder and art patron Hasso Plattner.

Stories and Secrets of Glienicke and the Havel

From Babelsberg Palace and Park, the tour continues to Klein Glienicke with its picturesque Swiss houses. Through the once-sealed-off town, long considered the “blind intestine of the GDR,” the route leads over the legendary Glienicke Bridge to the Havel River. Along the way, Eckart Granitza draws attention to magnificent views of Peacock Island, the Heilandskirche church in Sacrow, Nikolskoe, and architectural curiosities such as the Bavarian Moorlake inn, the legendary Flensburg lion, and the Wannsee lido.

Traces of art and destruction

On the last stage, you will visit the summer house of the famous Impressionist painter Max Liebermann and the house where the Wannsee Conference was held, where the extermination of European Jews was decided.

The route continues past the Großer Wannsee and sophisticated villas, dream homes, sailing and rowing clubs of the upper middle class, who were oriented towards the classical ideal of education.

Dinner with a View

The tour concludes with a shared dinner at the Restaurant on the historic Söhnel Werft (Shipyard), right on the Teltow Canal – enjoying good food, a relaxed atmosphere, and the opportunity for personal reflections with Eckart Granitza.