What are the Höfe in Berlin?

A Hof is a courtyard. When Berlin grew fast in the late 1800s, developers built deep, filling blocks behind the street with chains of inner courtyards packed with workshops and flats. Most were plain, but a handful, especially the cluster around Hackescher Markt, were built or later restored to be genuinely beautiful and are free to walk through in the daytime.

Are the Hackesche Höfe free to enter?

Yes. The courtyards are private property that the public is allowed to walk through, and there is no entry fee during the day. The shops, cafés, cinema and theatre inside keep their own hours, roughly late morning to early evening. The residential courtyards are calmest before mid-morning.

What is Haus Schwarzenberg?

Haus Schwarzenberg, at Rosenthaler Straße 39 next to the Hackesche Höfe, is a deliberately unrestored courtyard kept by an artists' association, its passage covered in constantly changing street art. The same building holds the Anne Frank Zentrum and the Museum Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind. You can walk the passage for free.

How do I get to the Hackesche Höfe?

Take the S-Bahn to S Hackescher Markt, served by the S3, S5, S7 and S9, plus the M1, M4, M5 and M6 trams. There is no U-Bahn at Hackescher Markt itself; the nearest is Weinmeisterstraße on the U8, about five minutes' walk away.

When is the best time to visit the courtyards?

Morning is best if you want them quiet, before tour groups and shoppers fill the Hackesche Höfe. If you want the Bonbonmacherei candy workshop in the Heckmann-Höfe, check its days first: it opens only a few days a week and usually takes a summer break, though the courtyard itself stays open.

The Hidden Courtyards of Berlin: A Walk Through the Höfe Around Hackescher Markt

Q: How long does the courtyard walk take?

From S Hackescher Markt to the Heckmann-Höfe is about 1.2 kilometres across five courtyard stops. You could rush it in half an hour, but the point is to slow down, so a relaxed morning or an easy afternoon suits it better.

Yusuf Ucuz
4 days ago
6 min read

Berlin looks, at first, like a city that keeps its best parts on the street. You walk down a long block of shopfronts and tall grey facades and assume that is all there is. It usually is not. Behind those facades, especially around Hackescher Markt, the city hides a second layer: connected courtyards, called Höfe, that most visitors walk straight past on their way to the next big sight.

My advice: do not treat these as a secret you have to unlock. The best courtyards near Hackescher Markt are free, open in the daytime, and clustered within a ten-minute walk of each other. The useful skill is knowing which passage to step into, and in what order. This is the short walk I send people on when my tour finishes and they ask what to do next.

The illuminated Art Nouveau tiled facade of the first courtyard of the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin at night.

The first courtyard of the Hackesche Höfe. August Endell's glazed-brick facade is the postcard, but it is only the start of the block.

What Berlin courtyards (Höfe) really are

A Hof is simply a courtyard, but in Berlin the word carries a whole piece of history. When the city exploded in size in the late 1800s, developers built deep. Instead of one building on the street, they filled the block behind it with a chain of inner courtyards, sometimes five or six deep, stacked with workshops, small factories and cramped rental flats.

Most of these back courtyards were plain and functional. A handful were built, or later restored, to be genuinely beautiful. That is what makes the cluster around Hackescher Markt special: several of the good ones sit almost side by side, so you can walk from a polished showpiece into a raw street-art passage into a quiet rose garden in the space of a few minutes.

Two things to know before you step in. First, the courtyards are private property that the public is allowed to walk through, so keep your voice down near the residential ones. Second, the residential courtyards are calmest in the morning, before the shops and tour groups arrive.

The walk at a glance

This is a short loop, not a hike. From S Hackescher Markt to the Heckmann-Höfe is roughly 1.2 kilometres of actual walking, spread across five courtyard stops. You could rush it in half an hour, but the point is to slow down, so give it a relaxed morning or an easy afternoon.

Use the map below to see the stops in order, what each one is, and how far it is from the last. The walking time and distance add up as you move through it, so you can see how little ground it really covers.

1. Hackesche Höfe: the famous one

Start where almost everyone does. The Hackesche Höfe are eight interconnected courtyards at Rosenthaler Straße 40, opened in 1906 and the largest single courtyard complex in Germany. Walk in through the main arch and the first courtyard hits you immediately: a facade of blue and cream glazed brick, designed by the architect August Endell in full Art Nouveau style, wrapped around the entrance to the Chamäleon variety theatre and a small cinema.

Do not stop at the first courtyard. Keep walking deeper into the block. Each courtyard is numbered on the wall, Hof I through Hof VIII, and the mood changes as you go: cultural and commercial at the front, quieter and residential toward the back. The buildings were nationalised and left to decay in the GDR years, then restored from 1993 at enormous cost, which is why they look this sharp today.

A courtyard sign reading Zum Hof IV under red autumn vine leaves in the Hackesche Höfe.

Each courtyard is numbered. Following the signs from Hof I to Hof VIII is the whole walk in miniature.

2. Haus Schwarzenberg: the opposite, one door away

Step back onto Rosenthaler Straße, look one door south to number 39, and you find the exact opposite of the polished Höfe. Haus Schwarzenberg was kept deliberately unrestored by an artists' association, and its narrow passage is coated top to bottom in paste-ups, stickers and spray paint that changes month to month. After the tidy Hackesche Höfe, the contrast is the point.

It is not only a photo wall. The same building holds two serious museums: the Anne Frank Zentrum, and the Museum Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind, which tells how a small brush-and-broom workshop hid its Jewish employees during the war. You can walk the passage for free, and the museums are a short, powerful stop if you have the time. I have sent people in for the street art who came out having spent an hour with the history.

A playful street-art paste-up with googly eyes on a graffiti-covered wall in the Haus Schwarzenberg courtyard in Berlin.

Haus Schwarzenberg keeps the raw, layered look most of Mitte has lost. The art changes constantly, so no two visits look the same.

3. Rosenhöfe: roses and a tower over the roof

A few steps further up Rosenthaler Straße, another entrance leads into the Rosenhöfe. A 1990s redesign wrapped this courtyard in green wrought-iron balconies and planted it as a rose garden that climbs the walls through the summer. It is small and easy to miss, which is exactly why it stays calm.

Stand in the middle and look up. On a clear day the TV Tower shows over the roofline, one of those quiet Berlin views you only get by stepping off the street. The passage carries you through toward Sophienstraße and the quieter half of the walk.

The green wrought-iron arcade and rose garden of the Rosenhöfe in Berlin, with the TV Tower visible above the roofline.

The Rosenhöfe trade the crowds of the Hackesche Höfe for wrought iron, roses and a sliver of the TV Tower.

4. Sophienstraße and the quiet Höfe

Come out near Sophienstraße and the tempo drops completely. This is one of the few streets in Mitte that still looks close to its 18th and 19th-century self, restored rather than flattened and rebuilt. Duck into the passages at numbers 19 to 21 and the street noise disappears.

The Sophie-Gips-Höfe, a former sewing-machine factory, is the elegant one here: brick, ivy and a gallery-quiet feel a couple of minutes from the crowds. This is the stretch where the walk stops feeling like sightseeing and starts feeling like ordinary Berlin, which is the best thing these courtyards do.

A quiet, sunlit residential courtyard off Sophienstraße in Berlin with cafe tables and a passage back to the street.

The courtyards off Sophienstraße are where the walk turns from an attraction into a plain, calm corner of the city.

5. Heckmann-Höfe: finish with the candy workshop

Continue west to Oranienburger Straße 32 and step into the Heckmann-Höfe for the final stop. This restored 19th-century courtyard run is lined with small shops and cafés, but the reason people remember it is the Bonbonmacherei, where sweets are still boiled and shaped by hand behind a glass kitchen.

Treat the workshop as a bonus, not a promise: its opening days are limited and it usually takes a summer break. Check the current schedule before making a special trip. Even when the workshop is closed, the courtyard gives the walk a calm finish and leaves you close to Oranienburger Straße transport.

When to go, and how to walk it well

A few practical notes so the walk actually works:

Go in the morning if you want it quiet. By early afternoon the Hackesche Höfe fill with tour groups and shoppers. The residential courtyards never get truly busy, but they feel best early.
The courtyards are free; the businesses inside keep their own hours. Shops and cafés open late morning and close in the early evening, so a mid-morning to late-afternoon window catches everything open.
If you want the candy workshop, plan around it. The Bonbonmacherei in the Heckmann-Höfe, where sweets are still boiled and pulled by hand, only opens a few days a week and usually takes a summer break. Check before you make a special trip. The Heckmann-Höfe courtyard itself stays open either way.
Getting there is easy. S Hackescher Markt is served by the S3, S5, S7 and S9, plus the M1, M4, M5 and M6 trams. There is no U-Bahn at Hackescher Markt itself; the nearest is Weinmeisterstraße on the U8, about five minutes away.

Where this fits after the tour

My two-hour walking tour ends at Hackescher Markt, which puts you at the mouth of this walk without planning it. If you still have energy, the courtyards are the natural next step: a slow, low-effort way to see a side of Mitte that the main streets hide. If you would rather eat or sit down first, my guide to what to do near Hackescher Markt after the tour covers the food and river options nearby.

The courtyards also fit a bigger truth about the city. Berlin does not have a picture-book old town, and I have written before about why that absence is actually the point. The Höfe are a good example: not a preserved medieval square, but a working layer of the modern city that rewards anyone willing to step off the street. If you like this kind of looking, my walk through the hidden places of central Berlin does the same thing on a longer route.

Image credits

Source and licence details for the 5 photographs used in this article.

Hackesche Höfe, first courtyard with August Endell’s Art Nouveau facade at night: Marek Śliwecki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

“Zum Hof IV” courtyard sign under autumn vine leaves, Hackesche Höfe: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Street-art paste-up in the Haus Schwarzenberg courtyard: Singlespeedfahrer, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Rosenhöfe arcade and rose garden with the TV Tower behind: Nylki, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Quiet residential courtyard off Sophienstraße: Helge Høifødt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.