This is a district that has everything: from a lively restaurant and bar scene to wasteland; from perfectly renovated apartment blocks to mansion house and more than a few new and architecturally exciting buildings. This is rare even in a city as varied as Berlin. The Rosenthaler Vorstadt is not one of the larger districts in this part of town, however: It is merely perfectly situated.
To the south, the Rosenthaler Vorstadt ends at that part of Torstrasse with a reputation that has reached as far as New York. It is said that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have an apartment here, while half of the city’s IT scene gather at the St. Oberholz café on Rosenthaler Platz, a place where people spend less time talking and more time consulting their tablets and smartphones. Here you can see what the transformation in the worlds of media and work really looks like.
From Rosenthaler Platz, we pass the Weinbergspark and head diagonally down Kastanienallee, colloquially referred to as Castingallee, being the runway of the new urban bohème. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kastanienallee has been a flashpoint between the new and old Berlin and has its own peculiar charm in the form of the sort of cross-pollinating lifestyles that you might find in Haarlem in Amsterdam.
Behind Torstrasse to the north lies Mitte’s most desirable residential area, comprising Ackerstrasse, Gartenstrasse, Fehrbelliner Strasse, and Choriner Strasse, with private apartments in an exclusive complex offering a Berlin lifestyle in 130 apartments across nine separate buildings. It’s an ideal place to live, with the pulsating life of the city only a stone’s throw away.
