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Money does not just grow on trees here, it flows in all directions. Londoners will appreciate why it is twinned with Hampstead. Everything is on a grand scale with even the railway stations being individually designed. It grew up as a transit stop between royal Berlin and royal Potsdam, being exactly 14 kilometres from each. Slightly more ordinary people are seen now, but they are smart seven days a week. Expect designer shops rather than supermarkets, villa colonies rather than blocks of flats, wine rather than beer.

Luckily even the rich use buses and trains, so walking here is always a pleasure, never a necessity. At the station now called Mexicoplatz, the restored Jugendstil interior is ample compensation for missing a train. Cycling is even nicer, with paths around the lakes, and too few cars to cause pollution. Factories are of course totally banished. Several villas are now museums, and no famous architect from the 1920s failed to leave his mark in Zehlendorf. One museum is in fact totally in the open air. Other visits include the eccentric palaces of minor royalty and senior Nazis.

Sights

Alliierten Museum (The Allies Museum)

Clayallee 135, http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de Thu-Tue 1000-1800. Free. U-Bahn Oskar-Helene-Heim.

It is now hard to realize that the theme of this museum only became history in 1994 when the American, British and French "occupation" troops left Berlin. Inevitably the museum is a Cold War period piece, but as there is only one other in Berlin (the Checkpoint Charlie museum) it is none the worse for that. The films it shows are as important as its exhibits and it covers the whole period from 1945 when this occupation started.

The museum was opened in 1998 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the blockade between June 1948 and May 1949 when the Russians closed the road, rail and canal links to West Germany. The allies organized a continuous airlift to supply West Berlin with goods with planes usually taking off and landing every minute, day and night. The museum is large enough to house aircraft, tanks, searchlights and the guardhouse formerly situated at Checkpoint Charlie.

Brücke Museum

Bussardteig 9, http://www.brueckemuseum.de Wed-Mon 1100-1900. €4. U-Bahn Oskar-Helene-Heim.

Tragedy gave this quiet and isolated museum international prominence in April 2002 when thieves stole nine paintings in a 10-minute raid. Die Brücke (The Bridge) is the name of an artistic school, initially close to Expressionism, which was founded in Dresden in 1905 and then based in Berlin until the outbreak of the First World War.

Perhaps better known for what they despised than what they stood for, it was subsequent Nazi hatred and persecution that ensured for them a worldwide and long-lasting reputation. Initially they concentrated on rural landscapes and on nudes; then several of them turned to urban backgrounds and pioneered the use of woodcuts. On the few occasions when works of artists such as Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner are offered for sale, they fetch millions. The location of the museum is deliberate, since it was where Arno Breker, the notorious Nazi sculptor and close partner of Albert Speer, had his studio.

Museumsdorf Düppel (Düppel Village Museum)

Clauerstr. 11, http://www.dueppel.de Sun Apr-Oct 1000-1700. Check the website for details of midweek openings. E2. S-Bahn Zehlendorf.

Visitors to eastern Europe will immediately feel at home in what they will know as an ethnographic museum. This one is, however, not an assembly of buildings from far and wide but an attempt to re-create exactly what was on this site. A bomb crater in 1940 revealed a village that clearly existed in the 12th century but seems to have been later abandoned. It was only in 1968 that excavation work started, in those days, in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Several houses have now been rebuilt and the great commitment in Germany to environmental issues has ensured support for the weaving, baking and even sheep-rearing that now takes place here. The articles sold here are original and politically correct souvenirs.

Pfaueninsel (Peacock Island)

The castle is open Tue-Sun 1000-1700. E3. S-Bahn Wannsee then bus 216 or 316. Boats cross to the island every 30 mins from 0800 till 2000. E1.

Friedrich Wilhelm III was on the throne for 43 years from 1797 till 1840 with many military and architectural achievements to his name, but Berliners will always remember him as the monarch who opened a palace to the public and in this case a whole island as well. Much would be novel to them, in particular the fountains and the palm trees and the peacocks which give the island its name. Less tastefully, a negro, a giant and two dwarfs were also brought in as servants and as curiosities for the visitors. It was a royal escape from the formal courts in Berlin and Potsdam so the house is less elaborate and the gardens more casual, even though they were designed by Peter Joseph Lenné (1789-1866), famous for his landscaping at most of the Berlin and Potsdam palaces. Little restoration has been necessary as there was no damage in the Second World War.

The house is probably unique as a royal residence in having only eight rooms and being built entirely of wood. However casual life was here, certain proprieties had to be maintained. The servants’ quarters, although also designed by Schinkel, are apart from the main building, as is the kitchen to protect the house from the danger of fire. An underground passage leads from the kitchen into the main house, which prevented a servant and his master casually bumping into each other in the gardens. Although senior Nazis entertained here frequently, they fortunately made no alterations to any of the buildings.

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