The Literaturhaus Berlin occupies a 1889 Gründerzeit villa on Fasanenstraße, steps from the Kurfürstendamm — a setting that has been housing the city's literary programme since 1986. The Café Wintergarten is the ground-floor glass-and-iron conservatory at the back of the villa: the original iron structure, the terrace opening to the garden in summer, the particular quality of a reading room that also serves coffee. The Buchhandlung im Literaturhaus is attached and holds the best literary programme bookshop in the city. On Sundays the brunch is unhurried; on weekday afternoons the Wintergarten has the quality that all literary cafés aspire to and few achieve — the sense that something worth thinking about is being thought about here, quietly, by people who have come for exactly that purpose.
Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany