Berlin Federal State hotels collection

Reaching the Pfaueninsel takes a small ferry across the Havel; peacocks walk freely there beneath the oaks, around a castle built as a feigned ruin: planks painted to look like stone, put together for a king and his mistress. Further north, the Grunewald lines up its pines along a chain of lakes; at the far end of the Land, the Müggelsee opens out among the forests of Köpenick. Under the needles the soil is sand, left behind by the glaciers, and the lakes still follow the beds of their meltwater.