1. Old Town Köpenick, untouched by both Allied bombs and GDR development, retains a good deal of its eighteenth-century charm. It makes a pleasant spot for a wander, with plenty of spots for coffee and cake, ice cream, or a treat from the small market on the Schlossplatz. Mira’s Langos stand sells Hungarian sausage as well as the eponymous fried-dough treats.
2. The Rathaus Köpenick, an extensive, turreted redbrick Wilhelmine building in the Old Town, was the site of a famous heist in 1906 by wastrel out-of-work cobbler Wilhelm Voigt. The Schuster dressed as a Prussian officer and ordered a contingent of troops inside to the town treasury, where they quickly raided the coffers. A bronzed statue of the moustachioed folk hero, memorialized as the Hauptmann (Captain) of Köpenick, welcomes visitors outside the Town Hall.
3. Covering 18.9 percent of the surface area of Berlin, Treptow-Köpenick—the two have been administratively joined since 2001—is geographically the city’s largest district.
4. With 70 percent of its area covered in forest or wetland, Köpenick is known as the “green lungs” of Berlin. Because the locality embraces stretches of the Spree and Dahme rivers as well as the considerable Mügglesee, Köpenick is, literally, a backwater district, divided physically and psychically from much of the city—with its own strong sense of narrative and identity.
5. Known habitation began with the Slavic settlement of Kopanica (“place by the river”) as far back as the eighth century. “Cöpenic,” as it came to be known, was comprised largely of a fishing colony hugging the banks of the Dahme. Today’s coat of arms, derived from the colony’s traditional medieval crest and showing two silver fish, seven golden stars (the Pleiades, the fishers’ constellation), and a golden key to symbolize Peter, patron saint of fishermen, can be found on many buildings.
6. The Kietz neighborhood, or Fischerkietz, on the eastern shore of the Dahme below the Old Town, with its sleepy, rural feel and steep-roofed, single-story fishermen’s cottages, is easily the most charming outpost of K…