Wilmersdorf is the quiet, leafy, well-off counterweight to the rest of inner Berlin — wide streets of Wilhelmine apartment blocks, embassy villas, and old West Berlin money. In the 1920s so many Russian émigrés settled here and in neighbouring Charlottenburg that the area earned the nickname Charlottengrad. It is short on nightlife and long on calm.
Café life gathers around Ludwigkirchplatz, a tree-shaded square ringed with terraces, while the Rheingauviertel to the south names its streets after wine villages and pours free Rhine wine from a fountain on Rüdesheimer Platz on summer evenings. The Kurfürstendamm forms the northern edge, where the Schaubühne — one of Germany's most important theatres — occupies a streamlined Erich Mendelsohn cinema building.
The local secret is Preußenpark, better known as Thai Park: on warm weekends Thai and Southeast Asian families spread blankets and cook from portable kitchens, turning the lawn into one of Berlin's best and cheapest open-air food markets.