Kieran Drake takes a plunge into some of the city’s finest historic swimming pools…
One of my greatest pleasures since moving to Berlin has been swimming—above all in the lakes and rivers in and around the city. But during the winter, though I continue to swim in my local lake, that experience becomes more about the associated endorphin rush of cold water immersion and less about swimming any kind of distance.
It’s during these colder, darker months that I seek out the warmer waters of Berlin’s indoor pools. Along the way, I’ve discovered that despite the loss of so many to war, division and gentrification, the city is still blessed with several striking and historic swimming venues that stretch as far back as the nineteenth century.
The earliest swimming pools in Berlin were those that developed around Gesundbrunnen (which means “healthy spring”) during the eighteenth century, created at the behest of Emperor Frederick II. Not much is left of these except the name of the district; they were effectively spoiled by the polluting aspects of nineteenth-century industrialisation and subsequently destroyed.
As were many of the city’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century baths during the Second World War, while others such as the beautiful old baths in Steglitz and Lichtenberg have been abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair; or, like the old Volksbad Moabit. demolished to make way for housing.
All the more reason to celebrate the ones we still have left…
Stadtbad Charlottenburg, Alte Halle (1898)
Berlin’s oldest surviving indoor swimming pool, Stadtbad Charlottenburg is located along a quiet side street off Bismarckstrasse in the west of the city, set inside an imposing Gothic-style red-brick building that’s adorned with snarling fish and other eye-catching, water-themed gargoyles.
During the 1900s, Berlin experienced the fastest population growth in its history, increasing more than tenfold from just 220,000 in 1824 to over 2.5 million by the end of the century. As the population expanded, the pressure on the city authorities to provide public facilities for its inhabitants—market halls, hospitals, public baths—grew too.
At a time when most homes had no bathrooms, the new public baths provided a place for personal hygiene and helped control the spread of infectious diseases. As such, they often housed bathtubs as we…