Looking Beyond: the new Berlin

This is the first of a new series (don't worry, Museum crawl is still on) where we look at some of the world's great cities and their cultural offerings. With Unification just about coming of age, Germany's capital is hotter than ever - and that's saying a lot.

Berlin's young generation has chosen to transform the past into something liberating. Everywhere, particularly in the fashionable Mitte district, former fortresses to fascism now shelter art galleries, museums and bars.

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Laurent Burst for The Wall Street Journal

Uhren Bischoff in West Berin near Kurfuerstendamm. See photos of other places around Berlin.

There are more than 500 galleries in the city—including cool new "pop-up" art spaces—and plenty of chic new boutique hotels, including the Amano, the Casa Camper and the party-friendly Soho House that has decamped in the former East German Communist headquarters. In the past month alone, a half-dozen notable fashion boutiques opened in Berlin, among them Pastpresent, an arty concept store selling vintage finds and Berlin buzz brands like Sleep is Commercial and 24/7 Suits.

Berlin's creative boom rivals even the smoky jazz club and flirty-flapper cabaret heyday of the early 1920s Weimar Republic. But while the city that embraced the rule-breaking Bauhaus movement may have found a new role as the unofficial art capital of Europe, it's nothing like Paris or New York: No one teeters around its cobblestone streets in high heels, no one asks what anyone else does for a living or how much they make doing it.

Art collector or starving artist, you spend your days navigating Berlin by bicycle and your nights gliding in and out of parties without lines and insider-y night spots (like the unmarked Tausend, hidden under an overpass). The Berlin party scene is not for the faint of heart, often wrapping up at 5 a.m.

A laid-back feeling hangs over weekends in Berlin, which consist of sleeping late and poking around the flea markets. The weekday social calendar, a shuffle of gallery openings and late-night DJ sessions, makes a visitor wonder if anyone in Berlin ever works. In fact, Berliners are on double duty: Their devotion to sustaining the city's creative life is matched by a determination to live it too.

-Wall Street Journal