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Berlin History School Trips & Tours

The recent history of Germany’s capital is still clearly evident today, to the extent that it is impossible to walk through the city without being continually made aware of its recent past.

During a history school trip to Berlin, your group will see for themselves the breathtaking pace and breadth of change since 1989. A study tour to this exciting historic city provides pupils with the opportunity to learn from a range of excellent educational visits, covering all aspects of Berlin’s recent past. 

Sample itinerary

Our sample itinerary provides you with an idea of the visits you can cover during your trip. We can tailor-make an itinerary to support your specific learning outcomes.

Morning Afternoon Evening
1 Flight from Ireland. Meet & Greet and check-in assistance from NST Representative. Introductory tour of Berlin Bowling
2 Visit the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, Göring’s Air Ministry buildings, Topography of Terror and German Resistance Memorial Centre. Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz
3 Coach excursion to Sachsenhausen Memorial Site Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse TV Tower
4 Holocaust Memorial and the Palace of Tears Return flight to Ireland
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Morning Flight from Ireland. Meet & Greet and check-in assistance from NST Representative.
Afternoon Introductory tour of Berlin
Evening Bowling
Morning Visit the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, Göring’s Air Ministry buildings, Topography of Terror and German Resistance Memorial Centre.
Afternoon
Evening Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz
Morning Coach excursion to Sachsenhausen Memorial Site
Afternoon Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse
Evening TV Tower
Morning Holocaust Memorial and the Palace of Tears
Afternoon
Evening Return flight to Ireland

On-tour support

Get even more from your trip with NST History Educationalist Guide. Contact us for a price.

On-tour support includes...

  • Services of a See Off Representative at your departure airport
  • Services of an NST Berlin City Representative to assist with hotel check-in and provide 24-hour assistance

Additional on-tour support available...

  • Pre-booked meals at great group prices

 


Accommodation

Popular options in Berlin


Top visits

Guided Walking Tour - Berlin Centre

This walking tour covers the key city centre sites in depth:

  • The Reichstag
  • Brandenburg Gate
  • Holocaust Memorial
  • Hitler’s Bunker
  • Potsdamer Platz
  • Reich Air Ministry buildings
  • Topography of Terror
  • Checkpoint Charlie Museum
  • Unter den Linden
  • Neue Wache
  • Bebelplatz (site of the book burning)

Throughout a full day or split across two half days, our guides can cover a number of key historical sites, providing your group with full commentary that will put them in the context of your curriculum. 

Guided Walking Tour - Fall of Communism - East Berlin

On foot and public transport, tour the former East Berlin including the Zionskirche, Gethsemanekirche and the Bornholmer Bridge.

Throughout a full day or split across two half days, our guides can cover a number of key historical sites, providing your group with full commentary that will put them in the context of your curriculum. 

Only available with a History Educationalist Guide

Guided Walking Tour - Fall of Communism - Central Berlin

This tour includes sites in and around Alexanderplatz concentrating on the events of September - November 1989. 

Throughout a full day or split across two half days, our guides can cover a number of key historical sites, providing your group with full commentary that will put them in the context of your curriculum. 

Only available with our Educationalist Guide.

Olympic Stadium

Built for the 1936 Olympics, this is an excellent example of Nazi architecture. This is where the black American athlete, Jesse Owens, won four gold medals, supposedly infuriating Hitler because of his race.

Topography of Terror

This fascinating exhibition is contained within the former cellars of Gestapo HQ, illustrating the terrors and crimes of the Nazi era. The new documentation centre and other exhibitions are presented in both English and German.

Reich Air Ministry Buildings

Opened in 1936, this is an excellent example of National Socialist style architecture and is now the home of the Ministry of Finance. The 8 metre socialist realist mural on one corner of the building is a reminder of its time as The House of the Ministries, one of the most important government buildings in East Germany.

German Resistance Memorial Centre

Situated in the Bendlerblock, the former Wehrmacht building from which the July Bomb Plot was organised and where Stauffenberg and several of his co-conspirators were executed, the museum covers all aspects of opposition and resistance to National Socialism within Germany.

Berlin Wall

Here, your group will see how East and West Berlin were divided for 28 years. The Bernauerstrasse Memorial allows students to see remains of the Berlin Wall as well as an exhibition on Berlin during the Cold War. The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving stretch of the wall and is nearly 1.5km long – and includes the work of various artists and political cartoonists.

DDR Museum

Situated in the city centre, this interactive museum offers fascinating insights into daily life in the DDR. Take a virtual drive round an East German housing estate in the Trabi simulator. This interactive museum immerses students into daily life during the Communist Era in East Berlin helping them understand the period in a unique and entertaining way.  The museum also provides school groups with free-of-charge quiz sheets to download from their website, which students can use to work their way through the exhibition in an independent but structured fashion. Answer sheets are available from the entrance desk!

https://www.ddr-museum.de/en/your-visit/teachers-groups

Berlin Bunker Tour

A fascinating tour into the secret history below the city’s streets. The standard tour visits a series of tunnels and bunkers below Gesundbrunnen U-bahn station that gives a fascinating insight into the Home Front in Berlin during the Second World War as well as preparations made for nuclear attacks during the Cold War.

DDR Museum Kulturbraueri

From idyllic countryside dacha to works canteen and Bautzen prison - the exhibition, spread over 600 square meters, presents original objects, documents, films and audio recordings that explore the gap between ideals and reality in the GDR. The individual experiences showcased illustrate the diverse attitudes towards the communist dictatorship, from loyal support to attempted neutrality or resistance.

Wallmuseum-Haus at Checkpoint Charlie

Featuring exhibitions about the legendary border crossing point, this fascinating museum includes demonstrations of how individuals smuggled themselves across the border. Here, your group will have the opportunity to explore what drove some people to go along with the collectivist culture, and others to resist.  

Stasi Museum

At the site of the Stasi Headquarters, groups can gain a vivid insight into the huge power that this organisation wielded over citizens of the GDR. Visit the exhibition which includes the offices of key staff and learn more about the events that led to the opening of the border. 

Palace of Tears

The Berlin passport and customs office was known during the Cold War as the 'Palace of Tears'. This museum and memorial dedicated to documenting the separation of East and West Germany.

Hohenschönhausen Memorial

This former political prison for people detained by the Stasi is now a museum which covers not only the Stasi period but its origins as a Soviet Special Prison from 1946-51 and provides groups with a very authentic picture of prison conditions in the GDR. 

Visits Outside of Berlin - Leipzig

After Berlin, nowhere in Germany was more central to the events of 1989 than Leipzig, the GDR’s second city. The demonstration on 9th October 1989 and the regime's reaction to it was one of the major turning points of that momentous year. Visit the Nikolaikirche where the Monday evening meetings were held and from where the weekly protest marches set off. Visit the Runde Ecke, the former Stasi HQ and see the permanent exhibition ‘Power and Banality’. A full day coach excursion from Berlin.

Visits Outside of Berlin - Dresden

Famous for its porcelain and china works, Dresden was controversially bombed by the Allies in 1945 destroying around 80% of the city and killing thousands of its inhabitants. This beautiful city has since undergone extensive restoration including to its magnificent cathedral.

TV Tower

Located at the very heart of the city on the Alexanderplatz, the Berlin TV tower is part of German history: in the sixties the East German government had the TV tower built to demonstrate the strength and efficiency of the socialist party system. Today the tower, Berlin’s highest structure, shapes the skyline of the German capital city and has fantastic views - and serves as a landmark of the reunited Germany. Your group can pinpoint the many landmarks and attend the free exhibition. Groups can also take part in an immersive 15 min VR experience and time travel through 9 centuries of Berlin's history.

Berlin River Cruise

Take a cruise along the River Spree on this tour and see all the major attractions of the city while learning about the intriguing history of Berlin.

The Story of Berlin

A fabulous museum that shows over 800 years of Berlin’s history, through a number of interactive exhibitions and sound and light shows.

 

Tropical Islands Water Park

This indoor tropical beach, which lies outside of the city, is home to water slides, lagoons and miniature golf, as well as the world’s largest indoor rainforest. 

Stadtbad Schöneberg

This large, action-packed swimming complex has a pool with diving boards. It also has an outdoor pool, slide and whirlpools.

IMAX Cinema

Groups can visit the fabulous cinema at Potsdamer Platz. Bowling Am Schillerpark This bowling alley is the most popular of four available in Berlin.

Ice Skating

Groups can spend an evening at the ice-rink in Wilmersdorf.

Berlin Markets

The large indoor market in the centre of the city is an ideal place to put language skills to the test and pick up a bargain or two.

Potsdam

An excellent visit to the Cecilienhof Palace where the conference took place in the summer 1945. As well as a fascinating exhibition, students can actually visit the room where the negotiations between the immediate post-war leaders took place.

Audience with an eyewitness at the DDR Museum

Bring history to life with this fabulous opportunity for your students. During this one hour session they are able to listen and ask questions to people who actually experienced the reality of everyday life in the former East Germany.

Lindenstrasse Memorial Site

Located in Potsdam, the Memorial (a former prison complex) remembers the victims of political persecution and imprisonment in Germany from 1933 to 1989 (used by the Nazis, KGB and the Stasi), as well as how the Communist dictatorship was finally overcome in 1989-90.

Spy Museum

Embark on a journey into the shadowy realm of espionage and intelligence from the Cold War to the present. Exhibits on display will include such curiosities as preserved smells, infrared briefcases and cameras hidden in coats.

Neue Synagogue

When inaugurated in 1866, the Neue Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse was one of the largest in the world and the most important in the city. Damaged during Kristallnacht, the building was destroyed during the war. The front section and dome were restored in the 1980s and now house a fascinating museum chronicling the history of the building and its congregation. There are particularly good sections on the 1930s and the wartime period.

Sachsenhausen Memorial Site

One of the earliest and most important in Germany, the story of the camp from its origins, its development within the camp system, its wartime use, the liberation and its post-war history during the Soviet period, are told in a series of exhibitions within the extensive remains of the camp itself.

A visit to this holocaust memorial centre and former concentration camp helps pupils gain an understanding of the events during WWII. Guided tours of the entrance, guard towers, barracks and museum are available.

House Of The Wannsee Conference

The lakeside villa, where the now famous meeting took place in January 1942, houses a permanent exhibition House Of The Wannsee Conference which seeks to place the Wannsee Conference in its historical context. The exhibition traces the chronological development of the Holocaust from the origins of anti-Semitism through the conference itself, to the mass deportations and extermination.

Memorial for the Murdered Sinti & Roma

During the Nazi regime, hundreds of thousands of people throughout Europe labelled gypsies were tracked down and killed. This memorial to those Sinti and Roma people murdered serves as a reminder to never forget the suffering of the victims.

Holocaust Memorial

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, created by architect Peter Eisenman, is an emotional and imposing addition to the landscape of central Berlin. The memorial’s 2,711 concrete slabs cover an area of 4.7 acres. Beneath the memorial is an information centre detailing the lives of murdered Jews.

 

Brandenburg Gate Museum

This is the new multimedia museum, just 50 meters away from the Brandenburg Gate. You will embark at the heart of the capital on a worldwide unique, multimedia journey through 300 years of Berlin history. From the German Revolution, the German Empire, the Roaring Twenties, both World Wars, the fall of the Berlin wall to the victory of the 2014 football World Cup.

Ravensbrück Memorial Site

Situated about 60 miles north of Berlin, the extensive remains of Ravensbrück (the principal women’s concentration camp) now houses collections and exhibitions chronicling all aspects of the camp’s history. Among the thousands executed here were female members of the British spy network S.O.E. including Violet Szabo.

TimeRide

One City – Two Worlds
Berlin, 1985: A bus rolls up to Checkpoint Charlie. The guards are blocking its way. The passengers are travellers to a bygone era – guests of TimeRide Berlin. Modern VR technology makes it possible not only to take a look at history, but to experience it first-hand. During your one-hour stay, you will embark on a unique journey through time. Three exciting stations will take you to the divided Berlin!

 


Evening activites

  • Ice skating
  • Bowling
  • IMAX Cinema
  • Swimming

Study themes

  • The rise of Nazism
  • The impact of Nazism on government & society
  • The Nazis’ treatment of German Jews & other minority groups
  • Resistance & opposition to the Nazi government
  • The use of propaganda in the Third Reich
     

 

  • Denazification & the treatment of leading Nazis by the allies at the end of the Second World War
  • The post-war division of Germany and Berlin
  • East & west Berlin during the Cold War - life in the GDR
  • The end of the Cold War and a reunited Germany
  • The consequences for Germany of the end of the Cold War

Transport

We offer flights from a variety of departure airports and we’ll work with you to plan your route at the best value possible.

Flight


Giving you full support throughout

Before your tour

  • Your own dedicated NST contact
  • Bespoke tour itineraries
  • Unrivalled local knowledge & expertise
  • Curriculum linked visit programmes
  • Great value for money - no hidden costs
  • Free group leader inspection visits
  • Risk assessment guidance
  • Safety assured, transport, accommodation and visits

Whilst you're away

  • Free educational resources
  • Group-friendly accommodation
  • Exceptional standards of coaching
  • On-tour support from our reps on the ground
  • Support & assistance from our specialists guides throughout your tour
  • 24/7 support just a call away
  • Extensive group travel insurance

On your return

  • Priority rebooking services
  • Rewarding your loyalty with our reward scheme
  • You say, we listen - we're committed to continuously improving our tours
  • School travel company of choice since 1996