Prenzlauer Berg, north-east of Mitte, is the poster child for Berlin's post-Wall reinvention. This was once a working-class East Berlin neighbourhood of crumbling late-19th-century tenements, famously untouched by wartime bombing; in the 1990s, squatters and artists moved into the unheated buildings, and the district became the cultural frontier of reunified Berlin. Thirty years on, the tenements have been immaculately restored, the squatters have moved on to Wedding, and Prenzlauer Berg is the most expensive, most pram-filled, most aggressively bourgeois district in the city. The international stereotype about Berlin being full of young families in organic-cotton knitwear comes from here.
It is still a very pleasant place to walk. The streets around Kollwitzplatz and the old water tower are lined with cafés that spill onto the pavement, independent bookshops, boutiques, and a good Saturday farmers' market. Kastanienallee — "Casting Allee" — is the prime people-watching strip. The Kulturbrauerei, a huge 19th-century brewery complex off Schönhauser Allee, houses cinemas, concert venues, restaurants and one of the best Christmas markets in the city.
For a sense of what the neighbourhood was like before the renovation, walk the Mauerpark on a Sunday — the long green stretch of the former death strip, now famous for its Bearpit karaoke sessions and a flea market that is half the fun of a Berlin weekend.