Neukölln: The Neighbourhood That Keeps Getting Written Off

People have been declaring Neukölln over since about 2014. Too expensive. Too gentrified. Lost its edge. The interesting people have moved to Wedding or Lichtenberg or Schöneweide. Every year someone writes the piece.

I’ve been going to Neukölln my whole life — it was the next neighbourhood over from where I grew up — and I have a different view.

What Neukölln actually is

Neukölln is the most diverse neighbourhood in Berlin, which is saying something in a city of 190 nationalities. The northern part — roughly from the Hermannplatz south to Richardplatz — has changed significantly. Rents have risen. Bars and cafés have opened and closed through several cycles. The streets along the Sonnenallee are often described as the longest Arab street in Germany — Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian bakeries and restaurants, shisha cafes, grocery stores carrying things you cannot find in Mitte.

The southern part — Rixdorf, Britz, Buckow — is almost never written about in the same breath as the hip northern Neukölln. It is older, quieter, and in places genuinely beautiful. The Richardplatz in Rixdorf is a preserved Bohemian village centre from the 18th century. Most Berliners have not been there. Almost no tourists know it exists.

The food

The Sonnenallee is where you eat. Lebanese falafel and man’oushe. Syrian flatbread from bakeries that have been there since the 1990s. The Vietnamese places around Hermannplatz are consistently good and consistently cheap. The Neuköllner Markthalle on Neuköllner Markthalle has a weekly market worth going to.

Is it over?

No. It has changed — significantly, in places uncomfortably. But it is still one of the most interesting places in Berlin to spend a day. The people declaring it over are usually people who want it to be cheaper than it was when they discovered it. Which is a legitimate complaint. It is not the same as the neighbourhood being dead.