The Berlin Inner Ring () road is a

beltway A ring road (also known as circular road, beltline, beltway, circumferential (high)way, loop or orbital) is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town, city or country. The most common purpose of a ring road is to assist in reducin ...

route of major roads around the historic city centre of

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

encompassing the boroughs of

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuz ...

Pankow Pankow () is the second largest and most populous Boroughs and quarters of Berlin, borough of the German capital Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weissensee (Berlin), W ...

and

Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg () is the second Boroughs of Berlin, borough of Berlin, formed in 2001 by merging the former East Berlin borough of Friedrichshain and the former West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg. The historic Oberbaum Bridge, formerly ...

. It is named "Inner Ring" to distinguish it from both the wider City Ring (''Stadtring'') road including the

Bundesautobahn 100 is an Autobahn in Germany. The A 100 partially encloses the city centre of the German capital Berlin, running from the Wedding (Berlin), Wedding district of the Berlin-Mitte borough in a southwestern arc through Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf ...

sections and the outer Berlin Ring (''Berliner Ring'') orbital motorway.

Course

The Inner Ring road runs from Berlin Main Station in

Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the boroughs of Berlin, borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2022, about 84,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial sector, industr ...

clockwise along

Invalidenstraße Invalidenstraße, or Invalidenstrasse (see ß), is a street in Berlin, Germany. It runs east to west for through the districts of Mitte (locality), Mitte and Moabit. The street originally connected three important railway stations in the nort ...

, Caroline-Michaelis-Straße, Julie-Wolfthorn-Straße,

Bernauer Straße Bernauer Straße, or Bernauer Strasse (see ß), is a street of Berlin situated between the localities of Gesundbrunnen and Mitte, today both belonging to the Mitte borough. It runs from the Mauerpark at the corner of Prenzlauer Berg to the ...

, through

Prenzlauer Berg Prenzlauer Berg () is a Boroughs and localities of Berlin, locality of Berlin, forming the southerly and most urban district of the borough of Pankow. From its founding in 1920 until 2001, Prenzlauer Berg was a district of Berlin in its own right ...

along Eberswalder Straße and

Danziger Straße Danziger, being related to Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland) is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Adolphe Danziger De Castro (1859–1959), Jewish scholar, journalist, lawyer *Aharon Danziger (fl. 1976–1984), Israeli paralympic voll ...

Friedrichshain Friedrichshain () is a quarter (''Ortsteil'') of the borough of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany. From its creation in 1920 until 2001, it was a freestanding Boroughs of Berlin, city borough. Formerly part of East Berlin, it is adjace ...

, Petersburger Straße,

Warschauer Straße Warschauer Straße is a major thoroughfare in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district of central Berlin, the capital of Germany. The street begins at Frankfurter Tor to the north and spans 1.6km south to the intersection of the Oberbaumbrücke, M� ...

and Am Oberbaum, crosses the

Spree Spree may refer to: Film and television * ''The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace * ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery * "Spree" (''Numbers''), an episode of the television show ''Number ...

River on

Oberbaumbrücke The Oberbaum Bridge () is a double-deck bridge crossing Berlin, Germany's River Spree, considered one of the city's landmarks. It links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, former boroughs that were divided by the Berlin Wall, and has become an im ...

Kreuzberg Kreuzberg () is a district of Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Berlin-Mitte, Mitte. During the Cold War era, it was one of the poorest areas of West Berlin, but since German reunification in ...

, Oberbaumstraße, Skalitzer Straße, Gitschiner Straße, further westwards on Hallesches Ufer and Reichpietschufer (westbound) / Waterloo-Ufer, Tempelhofer Ufer and Schöneberger Ufer (eastbound) and finally back to the main station via the Tiergarten tunnel. In the southern part the route is identical with the historic customs city wall that was begirding the

Old Berlin Alt-Berlin ("Old Berlin"), also spelled ''Altberlin'', is a neighborhood (''Stadtviertel''), situated in the Berliner locality (''Ortsteil'') of Mitte, part of the homonymous borough. In the 13th century it was the sister town of the old Cöll ...

until 1861. The city wall had roads along its length so that after the wall was torn down it opened spaces similar to a

boulevard A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America, any urban highway or wide road in a commercial district. In Europe, boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former ...

. In the western part there had been the Entlastungsstraße road cut through the Great Tiergarten park to avoid the places around the

Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate ( ) is an 18th-century Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical monument in Berlin. One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was erected on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin t ...

and the Reichstag by about a mile. In the northern part the route takes advantage of one of the

Hobrecht-Plan The Hobrecht-Plan is the binding land-use plan for Berlin in the 19th century. It is named after its main editor, James Hobrecht (1825–1902), who served for the royal Prussian urban planning police ("Baupolizei"). The finalized plan "Bebauun ...

ring roads which runs considerably more outside of the Old Berlin limits so that there is no historic connection from Invalidenstraße to Bernauer Straße. The open space at Bernauer Straße is a consequence of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...

which led to old buildings along the street to be torn down. Rebuilding Invalidenstraße into a major road is the only thing left to close the Inner Ring Road. It was supposed to be finished in 2002 when the new main station had opened but it was blocked by court decision. It was left until end of December 2010 that finally all trials were dismissed and the court approved the plan which will rebuild the street into four lanes plus tram rail tracks and bicycle lanes. The senator announced that construction will start in spring of 2011 but one can not expect the new road to open before the mid of 2013. Berlin's urban planning department expects the last of three phases to be finished during 2015.{{cite web, url=http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/bauen/strassenbau/invalidenstr/de/vorhaben.shtml, title=Straßen und Brücken für Berlin: Verkehrsverbindung Nordbahnhof - Hauptbahnhof (Invalidenstraße): Das Vorhaben, publisher=Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umwelt, accessdate=2014-05-01, quote=Die Gesamtlänge des Ausbaus beträgt ca. 2,9 km, die Baumaßnahme ist in drei Phasen gegliedert und wird 2015 fertig gestellt sein., archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140413233243/http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/bauen/strassenbau/invalidenstr/de/vorhaben.shtml, archive-date=2014-04-13, url-status=dead

References

Roads in Berlin Ring roads in Germany