Footsteps of WWII · Berlin & eastern Germany
Topography of Terror, Berlin
Headquarters · 1933–1945
The story
From 1933 the buildings on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße (now Niederkirchnerstraße) housed the Gestapo headquarters, with its notorious house prison at No. 8, and later the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) formed in September 1939. Here Himmler's SS and police apparatus ran persecution across Germany and occupied Europe, directing the Einsatzgruppen that murdered Jews behind the Eastern Front. The buildings were wrecked by bombing and cleared after the war. The site lay forgotten beside the Berlin Wall until citizens' groups dug out the cellars in the 1980s. The present documentation centre opened in May 2010.
What to look for
A low grey pavilion holds the main exhibition on the SS and Gestapo. Outside, an open-air trench exhibition runs along excavated cellar walls of the Gestapo buildings, beneath the longest surviving stretch of the outer Berlin Wall on Niederkirchnerstraße.
Plan your visit
Open daily 10:00–20:00; free admission. No booking needed for individuals. The official site could not be loaded in October 2026, so check the website before you go.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Site of the Führerbunker · under 1 km
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe · under 1 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten · 1 km
- Reichstag, Berlin · 1 km
- German Resistance Memorial (Bendlerblock) · 2 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Treptower Park · 6 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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