Olympiastadion Berlin: A Family Guide to Tours, the Glockenturm, and Watching Hertha BSC

One Stadium, Ninety Years of History

Olympiastadion Berlin was built between 1934 and 1936 for the Berlin Summer Olympics, designed by architect Werner March (with his brother Walter) as the centerpiece of the much larger Reichssportfeld sports complex in what’s now the Westend district. March’s design sank roughly the lower half of the seating bowl 12 metres below ground level, a trick that let a stadium built to hold 110,000 spectators look far less monumental from outside than it actually was.

The site doesn’t shy away from what that stadium was built for. Germany’s Nazi government used the 1936 Games as a propaganda showcase, and the stadium’s own visitor materials describe how, ahead of the Games, IOC assurances were sought and given that the ruling party “would not present any difficulties” for the participation of Black athletes, assurances that sat uneasily with the regime the Games were meant to promote. The most famous result played out on this exact track: American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals (100m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100m relay), a result widely credited at the time and since as a very public rebuttal to the Nazi claim of Aryan racial superiority. During the war itself, the stadium’s underground spaces became bunkers and ammunition stores, and the surrounding Olympischer Platz was one of ten sites in Berlin where, on 12 November 1944, some of the war’s last conscripted units were sworn in.

After 1945 the site went through a deliberate process of symbolic change: British occupation forces used the grounds, the former Führerloge (the leader’s viewing box) was physically shortened to strip it of its original visual emphasis, and in 1950 the whole Reichssportfeld complex was renamed Olympiastadion, the name it still carries. A 2000-2004 renovation, costing around 242 million EUR, lowered the pitch by a further 2.65 metres, added a 37,000-square-metre roof, and brought the stadium to its current 74,475-seat capacity (expandable to roughly 76,000 for a handful of matches), ahead of hosting six games of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, including the final. Since then it has also hosted the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, a 2011 papal mass for 61,000 people, the 2015 UEFA Champions League final, the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games, and, in 2024, the UEFA EURO 2024 final. Families who want the historical background explained on-site, rather than skipped over, can walk the free Geschichtsort Olympiagelände trail (open April to October, daily 9:00-18:00): 45 bilingual panels covering the Reichssportfeld’s origins, architecture, and wartime and post-war history, spread across the wider Olympiapark grounds.

Getting to Olympiastadion Berlin

The nearest station is S Olympiastadion, served by lines S3 and S9, roughly a 4 to 5 minute walk from either exit: Flatowallee toward the South Gate, or Trakehner Allee toward the East Gate. U Olympia-Stadion, on line U2, is a bit further out, somewhere between 500 and 870 metres depending on which stadium gate you’re headed for. Bus lines M49 and 218 stop at Flatowallee, close to the South Gate.

Parking depends entirely on the calendar. On a Hertha BSC match day or during a major event, the managed lots near the stadium (including areas labelled PO4 and PO5) charge roughly 10 EUR. On an ordinary day with nothing scheduled, Olympischer Platz itself is free to park in, as is the Südtor area near Trakehner Allee. If you’d rather avoid driving all the way to the stadium, the Spandau Arcaden car park works as a park-and-ride option: leave the car there, then take the S-Bahn about three stops (roughly 7 minutes) and walk the rest of the way.

Visiting Independently: Sightseeing and the Glockenturm

Outside guided tours, the stadium grounds are open to independent visitors, normally 9:00 to 20:00 daily with last entry 30 minutes before closing, though hours shrink and sometimes close entirely around Hertha BSC match days and other major events, so it’s worth checking the current calendar before you go. A standard ticket (11 EUR adult, 6 EUR for children aged 6 to 14, 8 EUR reduced for students, pupils, trainees, disabled visitors, and groups of 10 or more, 27 EUR for a family card covering 2 adults and 3 children up to 14) lets you walk the grounds freely past information boards, though you won’t get onto the actual grass pitch or the stadium’s blue running track itself as an independent visitor. Children under 6 aren’t charged. A multimedia GPS guide, a handheld device with headphones offering narrated context in five languages, is available for an extra 4 EUR.

That same ticket includes the Glockenturm, the 77.17-metre bell tower standing beside the stadium. Its ground floor houses a documentary exhibition, produced with the German Historical Museum, covering the 1936 Games and the site’s history in German and English, and a glass-enclosed elevator carries visitors up to an observation platform with sweeping views toward Spandau, Alexanderplatz, Potsdam, and the stadium itself. The tower has its own difficult history worth knowing before you go up: the original bell, a 9.6-tonne casting from Bochum, survived the war itself, but the tower’s contents were accidentally set on fire by Soviet troops afterward, leaving the structure unstable enough that British army engineers demolished it in 1947. The bell fell the full 77 metres, cracked, and has never rung since; it’s preserved today as a memorial. The tower itself was rebuilt to the original plans between 1960 and 1962, slightly taller than before, with a new 4.5-tonne bell installed, and it was modernized again (at a cost of roughly 7 million EUR) ahead of the 2006 World Cup.

Photo by Gaby Lopez on Pexels

Guided Tours: Which One Fits Your Family

Guided tours run in small groups, roughly 11:00 to 18:00 (closed on Hertha match days and major events), booked through tickets.olympiastadion.berlin or by contacting tour@olympiastadion.berlin / +49 (0)30 306 88 888. Several themes are offered, and they aren’t all equally suited to young kids.

Private thematic and technology-focused group tours also exist for schools or larger parties, but one of the private options, the Exclusive Technology Tour with intermediate roof access, carries an 18-and-over minimum and isn’t a fit for a family outing. Wheelchair users should register in advance for most tours; the Light Experience and Technology tours in particular aren’t wheelchair-accessible.

Watching Hertha BSC

Hertha BSC has called Olympiastadion home since 1963, and after being relegated from the Bundesliga at the end of the 2022-23 season, the club has played in 2. Bundesliga ever since, continuing into the 2026-27 season, which opens on 7 August 2026. Match tickets are sold through the club’s own shop, with prices set per opponent rather than a single fixed rate, so it’s worth checking tickets.herthabsc.de close to the fixture you want. On top of standard concessions (a 10 percent discount for students, seniors, and people with disabilities, and a 40 percent discount for children up to 13 buying their own ticket), two family-specific programs are worth knowing about.

Children up to 6 always get a free Schoßticket, a lap ticket with no separate seat of their own, at any home match. For children aged 13 or under, the Kids4Free program lets one paying adult bring up to two of them in for free, seated together in the designated family sections (lower tier Block A, upper tier Block 1); this doesn’t apply to DFB-Pokal cup matches. Once or twice each season, Hertha also runs a Kinderspieltag, a dedicated family matchday. The most recent one, against SC Paderborn on 20 September 2025, temporarily expanded the free-child allowance to up to six children per paying adult across a much wider set of blocks (A, F, J/K, L, 1-3, 31-33, M, and O), and brought in a bouncy castle, table football, a target wall, a target-shooting stand, flower crown crafting, a radio stage with 94.3 rs2, youth teams playing on the pitch before kickoff, and appearances from mascot Herthinho. The club has said it plans to keep the format going in future seasons, though an exact date for 2026-27 wasn’t set as this was written.

What Families Should Know Before You Go

Prams are welcome on the grounds, but the venue is upfront that a visit involves stairs in places, so something you can lift and carry for short stretches works better than something bulky you’d need to leave behind, since there’s no on-site luggage or stroller storage. Dogs aren’t allowed anywhere on the grounds. Photography is fine for private, personal use, but tripods aren’t permitted, and filming isn’t allowed on the guided tours. Public areas of the stadium are wheelchair-accessible, though wheelchairs aren’t available to rent on-site, and several of the guided tours require advance registration to arrange accessible access (some, like the Light Experience and Technology tours, aren’t accessible at all). Independent sightseeing visitors move through walkways and viewing areas rather than onto the actual grass pitch or blue running track, so if getting genuinely close to the track surface matters to your family, that’s a reason to book one of the guided tours instead of the standard ticket.

Step by Step

1. Decide whether you want a match, a tour, or just independent sightseeing first, since prices, hours, and what you can actually access differ quite a bit between the three.
2. If it’s independent sightseeing, buy the family card (27 EUR for 2 adults + 3 kids) rather than individual tickets if there are two adults and at least two children in your group, and add the 4 EUR multimedia guide if you’d rather listen than read the information boards.
3. If it’s a guided tour, start with the Highlight Tour for younger kids and only consider the Light Experience Tour once children are old enough that flashing light effects and the 90-minute length aren’t a concern.
4. If it’s a Hertha BSC match, check your children’s ages against the two separate programs (free lap ticket under 6, Kids4Free up to two kids 13-or-under with one adult ticket) rather than assuming one automatically covers the other.
5. Check the current fixture list for an upcoming Kinderspieltag if a dedicated family matchday, with its wider free-ticket allowance and extra activities, would suit your visit better than an ordinary home game.
6. Confirm parking on the day you’re going: it’s free at Olympischer Platz and the Südtor area with nothing scheduled, but paid near the stadium on match days and during major events.

Compliance Note

This page reflects publicly available information about Olympiastadion Berlin, the Glockenturm, and Hertha BSC current as of mid-2026, drawn from the stadium’s own official site, visitBerlin.de, Wikipedia, and Hertha BSC’s official ticketing and news pages. It presents the site’s 1936 Nazi-era origins and wartime history in the same informational, non-endorsing way the venue’s own visitor materials do. Ticket prices, tour offerings, opening hours, and Hertha BSC’s league fixtures and family-ticket programs change from year to year and sometimes mid-season; confirm current details directly with Olympiastadion Berlin or Hertha BSC before planning a visit or buying tickets.