Reichstag

What it is

The Reichstag Building stands on Platz der Republik in the Tiergarten district, on the left bank of the Spree, and it is the seat of the Bundestag, the German parliament. It is also where the Federal Convention meets to elect the German president. Paul Wallot won the second architectural competition for it in 1882; Wilhelm I laid the foundation stone on 9 June 1884 and the building was finished in 1894, its four corner towers standing for the four kingdoms that joined at unification. The words Dem deutschen Volke, to the German people, went up over the main facade in 1916 against the wishes of Wilhelm II. Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed a republic from one of its balconies on 9 November 1918. The arson attack of 27 February 1933 gutted most of the interior and the Nazi regime used it as the pretext for the Reichstag Fire Decree; parliament moved to the Kroll Opera House and never returned. The Battle of Berlin damaged it further. Paul Baumgarten's postwar reconstruction ran from 1961 to 1971 and dismantled the surviving cupola. Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the building in 1995. Norman Foster then rebuilt it from 1995 to 1999, keeping visible traces of its history, and the Bundestag convened here on 19 April 1999.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

What a visitor without a booked tour sees is the roof terrace and the glass dome above it, and both are visited unaccompanied. The Bundestag lends a free audio guide on the roof terrace, twenty minutes long, in twelve languages: German, English, French, Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian, with a further version in plain German. Children aged six to thirteen get their own version, built round a story about a member of parliament and his young relatives, which explains how laws are made while walking the ramp. Blind and severely sight-impaired visitors have a separate audio guide of forty-five minutes and a shoulder case holding eleven tactile reliefs of buildings such as the Chancellery and the Brandenburg Gate, plus a relief of the surroundings to place them. Deaf visitors have a video guide of twenty-four films in sign language, triggered at fixed points on the ramp by a vibration. Inside the dome itself, twelve display cases carry the parliamentary history exhibition Vom Reichstag zum Bundestag, made by the Haus der Geschichte foundation, which tells the building's story from the beginning to the present. The rooftop restaurant is a separate proposition and needs its own reservation. When the dome is closed the audio guide is not issued.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow an hour. The Bundestag publishes no suggested length for a dome and roof-terrace visit, and the only duration it does publish is the audio guide: twenty minutes of commentary covering the building, the parliament and the view. Around that sit the parts nobody times for you. Entry is through the central visitors' entrance with an X-ray check of bags and coats and a metal-detector check of the person, and that queue is the least predictable element of the visit. The ramp is a double spiral, one lane rising and one descending, and most people stop on the way up more often than they expect. The roof terrace is where the audio guides are handed out and returned, so it is walked twice. An hour covers all of that at a normal pace without hurrying the terrace. The booked formats are different visits with published lengths. A guided tour of the building runs ninety minutes, a lecture on the visitors' gallery of the plenary chamber runs forty-five minutes, and a plenary sitting is watched for about an hour; each of these is followed by the dome only if parliamentary business, events, weather and the security situation allow it, so budget the dome time on top rather than inside it.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The dome and the roof terrace are open to visitors daily, and the Bundestag does not publish a daily opening and closing time for them on its visitor pages, so the confirmed appointment is what governs the arrival. The published exceptions are firm. The dome and terrace are shut all day on 24 December and from 16.00 on 31 December, with last admission at 14.30 that day. For cleaning and maintenance the dome cannot be visited from 14 to 18 September 2026, from 28 September to 2 October 2026, and from 19 to 30 October 2026; the roof terrace stays open through all three. Sustained high temperatures can close the dome for safety reasons and in exceptional cases the terrace too, and the Bundestag warns that this may only be announced on site. Additional closures are given out by telephone on 030 227-32083, Mondays 9.00 to 15.00, Tuesdays to Thursdays 9.00 to 16.00 and Fridays 9.00 to 13.00. The walk-up Service Centre keeps its own hours: 8.00 to 18.00 from 1 November to 31 March, 8.00 to 20.00 from 1 April to 31 October, and 10.00 to 18.00 at weekends.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Everything the Visitors' Service offers is free of charge, the dome and roof terrace included. What it costs is planning. A visit requires an appointment booked in advance, through the online form, by fax on 030 227-36436, or by post to Deutscher Bundestag, Besucherdienst, Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin. Booking by telephone is not possible. Name, first name and date of birth are needed for every participant, and an incompletely filled form cannot be processed. The online system takes dome requests only for the current month and the month after, while guided tours can be requested for the current month and the two following it. A request is not a booking: what counts is the written confirmation from the Visitors' Service. Visitors who decide at short notice can register in person at the Service Centre on Platz der Republik, where personal entry passes are issued up to two hours before the visit if places are free, and appointments for the following two days can also be had; longer-term bookings are not taken there. Everyone aged sixteen or over needs a valid official photo ID, a national identity card or passport. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds should bring a document with their name and picture. Copies are not accepted.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The address is Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and visitors enter through the central visitors' entrance on the square in front of the building. No car is needed and the Bundestag publishes no visitor parking; its own site plan shows the main railway station a short walk north across the Spree and the Brandenburg Gate a short walk east, which is how most people arrive. Since 14 August 2026 the Service Centre, where walk-up passes are issued, has stood at a new position centrally on Platz der Republik. Approaching from the north, from the direction of the Paul-Löbe-Haus and the main station, is only partly possible because of continuing construction work: the site plan shows the fenced compound between the two, so allow for a detour around it rather than a straight line. Visitors with disabilities, elderly or frail visitors, parents with prams and anyone holding a table reservation in the rooftop restaurant use the entrance below and to the right of the West Portal, marked West C. The Reichstag Building is accessible to wheelchair users by ramps and through that entrance, wheelchairs can be borrowed, and the lifts give audio floor announcements and carry Braille labels.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

A confirmed dome appointment is not a guarantee. The Bundestag states plainly that access depends on the current work of parliament, on special events in the building, and on the weather and security situation, that a dome visit cannot be guaranteed, and that even confirmed appointments may be cancelled on site at short notice with no separate notification by email, telephone or fax. Plan the day so that losing the dome costs an hour and not an afternoon. Security is the other thing to prepare for. Large pieces of luggage may not be brought into the building and there are no storage facilities on site, so anything bigger than a day bag has to be left elsewhere first. Bags and coats go through an X-ray machine and visitors are checked with metal detectors. The published list of items that may not be carried in covers weapons and dangerous objects such as knives, and also certain tools, whistles, bottles, irritant and pepper sprays, and laser pointers. Entry passes are personal and non-transferable, and identity is checked both when the pass is issued and at the entrance. Conduct and clothing must respect the dignity of the House; material with racist, xenophobic, violence-glorifying, discriminatory, antisemitic or extremist content is banned, on clothing and accessories too.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

The Bundestag's visitor pages set out what may not be carried into the building but say nothing about photography in the dome or on the roof terrace, so no rule is claimed here; ask at the entrance if it matters. What the published rules do settle is the kit. Large luggage is refused and nothing can be stored on site, so a full camera bag is a problem to solve before arriving rather than at the door, and everything carried goes through an X-ray machine. Laser pointers are on the prohibited list. The dome itself is the difficulty. It is glass, it is busy, and the mirrored cone in the middle throws the light back at whatever is pointed at it, so the clean shots are usually the ones that use the reflections rather than fight them. A sun shield tracks the sun across the day to keep direct light off the chamber below, which means the shadow pattern on the cone changes hour to hour. Midday sun on clear days is the hardest case. Wide lenses earn their place twice, once for the cone seen from the terrace floor and once for the ramp curving overhead. From the terrace the view over the government quarter and the Tiergarten is level and open, and it is the easier picture of the two.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

• 45 min

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  Brandenburg Gate

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  Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

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External links

• View on Wikidata