Maybachufer: The Turkish Market on the Canal
Why is it significant?
Cross the Kottbusser Brücke and turn left along the south bank of the Landwehrkanal. On market days the Maybachufer turns into a long canyon of stalls under the plane trees: pyramids of tomatoes and peppers, armfuls of fresh herbs, olives in twenty shades, bolts of bright fabric, and traders…
Key Facts
| Place | Maybachufer: The Turkish Market on the Canal |
|---|---|
| Address | Maybachufer, 12047 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.49530, 13.42250 |
| Part of Walk | Berlin Kreuzberg: Street Art, Punk Clubs & the Landwehrkanal |
| Generated | Generated |
Cross the Kottbusser Brücke and turn left along the south bank of the Landwehrkanal. On market days the Maybachufer turns into a long canyon of stalls under the plane trees: pyramids of tomatoes and peppers, armfuls of fresh herbs, olives in twenty shades, bolts of bright fabric, and traders calling out over the crowd. On other days it is a quiet, leafy bank with the water sliding by.
Technically, you have just left Kreuzberg. Here the canal is the border, and the Maybachufer belongs to Neukölln. The market everyone calls the Turkish market has been here for decades, born to serve the Turkish families on both banks. Today you will hear Arabic, Polish, Spanish, English and plenty of Berlin dialect between the stalls, and the bargaining is half the fun. At the end of the day, traders sometimes shout out bowls of whatever is left at give-away prices, and the crowd surges like a wave.
The canal itself is older than all of it. The Landwehrkanal was dug between 1845 and 1850, to plans by the garden designer Peter Joseph Lenné, to carry barge traffic around the crowded centre of Berlin. Bricks, coal, sand and timber floated along this water to build the booming city. Lenné gave it tree-lined banks, which is why it feels like a promenade rather than an industrial ditch.
It carries darker memories too. In January 1919, after the Spartacist uprising was crushed, soldiers murdered the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg and threw her body into this canal, further west, near the Tiergarten. It was only found months later. Every January people still gather to remember her, and the canal that looks so gentle in summer keeps that story in its dark water.
Buy a handful of something you cannot name, ask the trader what it is, and eat it by the water. Then walk back to Kottbusser Damm and carry straight on westwards along the canal, on the Planufer, to the next bridge: the Admiralbrücke.