When Tempelhof airport closed in 2008, Berliners voted in a referendum to keep its 300-hectare airfield empty rather than let developers build on it — and the result is one of the great urban open spaces in Europe. The two old runways now carry cyclists, skaters and kite-buggies; the meadows between them are given over to barbecues, community gardens, and birds nesting in the protected grassland.
The hulking Nazi-era terminal building, once among the largest buildings in the world, still curves along the western edge and can be visited on guided tours. Come on a summer evening when half of Neukölln is out flying kites and grilling, and the sheer flatness of the place — horizon to horizon, no buildings — feels like nowhere else in the city.