Spandau: Berlin's Medieval River Town

Spandau predates Berlin by over a century, having received its town charter in 1232 when the site at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers was already a significant settlement. The district was only incorporated into greater Berlin in 1920, and its residents have maintained a fiercely independent civic identity ever since — many Spandauers still say they are going to Berlin when they take the U-Bahn into the city centre, emphasising a separateness that persists psychologically if not administratively. The Altstadt — old town — preserves a medieval street plan around the Church of St Nicholas that is unique in Berlin, its scale and character closer to a small Brandenburg market town than a metropolitan district of one of Europe's great capitals.

The Spandau Citadel, a Renaissance fortress built between 1559 and 1594, is one of the best-preserved military complexes in northern Europe, its four bastions and central tower rising from the junction of the Havel and Spree in a configuration unchanged by four centuries of military technology that rendered its walls obsolete but never demolished them. The citadel now functions as a museum of Spandau's history, an atmospheric concert and events venue, and the setting for an annual Christmas market that fills its cobbled courtyard with candlelight and medieval pageantry. The Julius Tower at its centre is reputedly where Germany stored its Franco-Prussian War reparations in gold — a fragment of financial history embedded in architectural stone.

The Spandau Forest and Havel Lakes surrounding the old town provide the district's primary attraction for weekend Berliners escaping the city's density. The Havel beaches at Baumgarteninsel and Tegelort offer swimming in clean water within city boundaries, and the river's islands and channels reward canoeists and kayakers with a watery landscape of extraordinary natural quality for a European capital. The weekly market in the Altstadt and the preserved guild buildings around Am Juliusturm give Spandau a provincial authenticity that the rest of Berlin, for all its many virtues, cannot replicate.