With well over 300 established galleries of contemporary art and an ever-expanding network of small and temporary spaces scattered around the city, Berlin has clearly established itself as a cultural and creative capital of Europe. At the heart of this capital lies Auguststrasse, the original core of Berlin’s artistic community in the early 1990s and now home to the city’s most prestigious galleries. Before plunging into the galleries themselves, we’ll explore the background of this area by paying a visit to the now-closed Kunsthaus Tacheles, the massive, skeletal ruin of a 1907 department store that was occupied from 1990-2013 by a collective of artists from all over the world. The closing of Tacheles signalled the end of an era; we'll consider how the city's art scene is evolving as gentrification sets in and the once affordable art spaces and squats are closed, one after the other.