Berlin Heritage Cycle Tour

A Cultural-Historical Bike Tour Between Villas and Visions

Discover history on two wheels – This exclusive bike tour combines movement with depth. Eckart Granitza guides you with subtle humor and a storytelling sensibility to historic sites full of grandeur and hidden shadows. Having grown up in Berlin-Wannsee, he knows the area not only from the history books but from lived experience. With profound knowledge, he reveals traces of splendor, exile, power, and decay.

Start

The meeting point is the former East German checkpoint at Griebnitzsee. From here, you will cycle with Eckart Granitza through the villa colony of Neubabelsberg, once home to Jewish bankers and industrialists. After the expulsion and expropriation of its residents, prominent Nazis such as Joseph and Magda Goebbels, as well as film stars like Marika Rökk, moved into the villas. During the Potsdam Conference, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Harry Truman stayed 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

The tour continues via Babelsberg Palace and Park to Klein Glienicke with its picturesque Swiss-style houses. Once a sealed-off area known as the “appendix of the GDR,” the route leads over the legendary Glienicke Bridge to the Havel River. Along the way, Eckart Granitza draws attention to magnificent sightlines to Pfaueninsel, the Heilandskirche in Sacrow, Nikolskoe, and the Flensburg Lion.

Traces of Kleist and Liebermann

On the final leg, you will visit literary sites such as locations associated with Heinrich von Kleist, the Wannsee Conference House, and Max Liebermann’s summer house. Granitza connects historical events with cultural and artistic references, bringing the stories to life in their depth and significance.

Dinner with a View

The tour concludes with a shared dinner at Söhnel 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.