Some museums ask kids to look and not touch. The ones on this list give them more to do: buttons to press, things to build and take apart, or history told at a kid's height. Each card says what a kid does there, so you can pick by mood, weather and how much walking everyone has left in them.
The museum is built around its dinosaur hall, where kids crane up at Giraffatitan, the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Tristan Otto, an exceptionally well-preserved T. rex, and the Berlin Archaeopteryx, an early bird fossil, are on show too.
Other galleries cover minerals, the solar system, evolution and taxidermy animals, plus the Wet Collection: about a million specimens in jars of alcohol.
A large technology museum with a locomotive shed full of historic trains, a shipping hall where kids hoist sails and steer a boat into harbor, and an aviation wing with the "Candy Bomber" plane up on the roof terrace.
The Science Center Spectrum, on the same ticket, has more than 150 hands-on experiments. Outside, the museum park has a playground and picnic areas.
A hands-on children's museum in a former factory on Osloer Strasse in Wedding. The current exhibition, TALENTOPIA, is about finding what each kid is good at: building cardboard-tube cities with a construction crane, solving analog programming puzzles in a control center, painting at an art materials bar, playing word games, and making music from bottles and dishwasher parts.
There is no maze, despite the name.
MACHmit! is a hands-on children's museum inside the former Eliaskirche, a deconsecrated Protestant church in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids find their own route up a 7-meter climbing shelf, make things at the craft workbenches, and explore a changing art exhibition across two floors.
Traces of the church remain, including the tower clock, altar space and organ, alongside a historic print shop and an old soap store.
The Computerspielemuseum traces video games from Pong and Computer Space to today, with more than 300 exhibits and many playable classics. Kids can try a 1980s-style arcade, game on old consoles in living rooms set up like the 1970s, 80s and 90s, work a giant controller, and browse the Wall of Hardware's 70-plus devices.
It suits kids who already play games; toddlers will find little to do.
Built on the former no man's land of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, the museum traces spying from ancient ciphers through the Cold War to cyber espionage. Kids send Morse code, encrypt messages at a digital Enigma station, test secret inks in an agent lab and hunt for hidden bugs. The two-course laser maze gives each player one minute and an infrared video of the run.
Futurium is a museum about how people might live in the future, on the Spree between the main station and the Reichstag. The exhibition is split into three thinking spaces, human, nature and technology, full of interactive stations.
In the Futurium Lab, kids can craft, solder and program at hands-on workshops, and the rooftop Skywalk opens when the weather allows.
A reconstruction of a village from around 1200, built on the excavated site of a real 12th-century settlement. Across grounds the size of ten soccer fields, kids walk through thatched houses, storehouses, workshops, gardens and fields, and meet rare farm breeds such as Skudden sheep and the Düppel pasture pig.
On season weekends, volunteers in medieval dress cook, carve wood, work wool and demonstrate blacksmithing and pottery.
Some museums ask kids to look and not touch. The ones on this list give them more to do: buttons to press, things to build and take apart, or history told at a kid's height. Each card says what a kid does there, so you can pick by mood, weather and how much walking everyone has left in them.
The museum is built around its dinosaur hall, where kids crane up at Giraffatitan, the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. Tristan Otto, an exceptionally well-preserved T. rex, and the Berlin Archaeopteryx, an early bird fossil, are on show too.
Other galleries cover minerals, the solar system, evolution and taxidermy animals, plus the Wet Collection: about a million specimens in jars of alcohol.
A large technology museum with a locomotive shed full of historic trains, a shipping hall where kids hoist sails and steer a boat into harbor, and an aviation wing with the "Candy Bomber" plane up on the roof terrace.
The Science Center Spectrum, on the same ticket, has more than 150 hands-on experiments. Outside, the museum park has a playground and picnic areas.
A hands-on children's museum in a former factory on Osloer Strasse in Wedding. The current exhibition, TALENTOPIA, is about finding what each kid is good at: building cardboard-tube cities with a construction crane, solving analog programming puzzles in a control center, painting at an art materials bar, playing word games, and making music from bottles and dishwasher parts.
There is no maze, despite the name.
MACHmit! is a hands-on children's museum inside the former Eliaskirche, a deconsecrated Protestant church in Prenzlauer Berg. Kids find their own route up a 7-meter climbing shelf, make things at the craft workbenches, and explore a changing art exhibition across two floors.
Traces of the church remain, including the tower clock, altar space and organ, alongside a historic print shop and an old soap store.
The Computerspielemuseum traces video games from Pong and Computer Space to today, with more than 300 exhibits and many playable classics. Kids can try a 1980s-style arcade, game on old consoles in living rooms set up like the 1970s, 80s and 90s, work a giant controller, and browse the Wall of Hardware's 70-plus devices.
It suits kids who already play games; toddlers will find little to do.
Built on the former no man's land of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz, the museum traces spying from ancient ciphers through the Cold War to cyber espionage. Kids send Morse code, encrypt messages at a digital Enigma station, test secret inks in an agent lab and hunt for hidden bugs. The two-course laser maze gives each player one minute and an infrared video of the run.
Futurium is a museum about how people might live in the future, on the Spree between the main station and the Reichstag. The exhibition is split into three thinking spaces, human, nature and technology, full of interactive stations.
In the Futurium Lab, kids can craft, solder and program at hands-on workshops, and the rooftop Skywalk opens when the weather allows.
A reconstruction of a village from around 1200, built on the excavated site of a real 12th-century settlement. Across grounds the size of ten soccer fields, kids walk through thatched houses, storehouses, workshops, gardens and fields, and meet rare farm breeds such as Skudden sheep and the Düppel pasture pig.
On season weekends, volunteers in medieval dress cook, carve wood, work wool and demonstrate blacksmithing and pottery.
