Boxhagener Platz Berlin:
Boxi in Friedrichshain, Gentrification and Kiez
What is Boxhagener Platz?
Boxhagener Platz is a public square in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district, located between Grünberger Straße, Krossener Straße, Gärtnerstraße and Gabriel-Max-Straße.
It was laid out in the early 20th century and still serves as a green space, playground, market square and meeting place for the surrounding Kiez.
Why is Boxhagener Platz so well known?
Boxhagener Platz is best known for its weekly market on Saturdays and its flea market on Sundays.
At the same time, Boxi sits right in the heart of one of Friedrichshain’s liveliest areas: all around the square, you’ll find restaurants, bars, cafés and the nightlife of the Simon-Dach-Kiez.
How to get to Boxhagener Platz
Boxhagener Platz is located in the heart of Friedrichshain and is easiest to reach by public transport.
Good starting points are Samariterstraße U-Bahn station (U5) and Warschauer Straße S-Bahn and U-Bahn station; from either station, it’s a short walk through the Kiez.
I wouldn’t recommend coming by car – parking around Boxi is limited, and public transport is much more convenient.
Address: Boxhagener Platz 1, 10245 Berlin
Boxhagener Platz: Facts at a Glance
- Location: Berlin-Friedrichshain
- Nickname: Boxi
- Established: Early 20th century
- Weekly market: Saturday, 9:00–15:30
- Flea market: Sunday, 10:00–18:00
- Known for: Markets, green space, playground and the surrounding Kiez
- Special feature: Boxhagener Platz is protected as a historic garden monument
- Streets: Grünberger Straße, Krossener Straße, Gärtnerstraße and Gabriel-Max-Straße
- Historical detail: The square is home to a historic Berlin “Café Achteck” (a humorous term for certain public urinals)
Alright, friends,
we Berliners really just call it Boxi.
And for me, this isn’t just any square where I can give you a few Berlin tips:
Along with Frankfurter Tor, Oberbaumbrücke and Warschauer Straße, Boxi was one of the places that shaped my childhood.
I grew up here and regularly came here with my family back in the 90s and early 2000s.
Playground, water playground, weekly market, flea market, random events – Boxi was simply part of everyday life.
I still have some pretty good childhood memories of the playground and water playground in particular.
And that’s exactly why this blog gets a little more critical in places than some of the others.
Because Boxhagener Platz is still here. So is the Kiez around it. But much of the Friedrichshain I remember from back then is barely recognizable today.
Why is Boxhagener Platz so popular?
Boxhagener Platz is so popular because it brings together a market, green space, food and Berlin Kiez life within a relatively small area.
Especially on weekends, Boxi becomes a meeting place for locals, the occasional Berliner and visitors who then continue exploring Friedrichshain.
And I think this is exactly the point you need to understand:
Boxi itself really isn’t that spectacular.
It’s not Alexanderplatz, it’s not Tempelhofer Feld, and of course it’s not a classic Berlin attraction. Basically, you’ve got a few trees, a large lawn, playgrounds and a historic public toilet. Yet Boxhagener Platz is still one of the best-known places in Friedrichshain.
Its strength has always been the life around it.
You grab something to eat, sit on the lawn, wander through the market or end up in one of the bars in the Kiez later on. Kids play on the playground just a few meters away while people are constantly coming and going around the square. It’s exactly this mix of residential neighborhood and meeting place that makes Boxi what it is.
And that was already the case back then – just with a very different crowd.
I remember a lot more punks, small shops, record stores and those no-frills street burgers that shaped Friedrichshain back then. It wasn’t necessarily pretty or polished. But it felt real.
Today, Boxi is more international, more renovated and a lot hipper. Whether that has actually made it better is another question. We’ll get to that later.
What can you do at Boxhagener Platz?
At Boxhagener Platz, you can visit the weekly market on Saturdays and the flea market on Sundays, sit on the lawn or use the square as a starting point for exploring Friedrichshain. Around Boxi, you’ll also find plenty of restaurants, cafés, bars and small shops.
If it’s your first time here, I wouldn’t make the mistake of simply walking across the square and then thinking: Okay, so that was the famous Boxhagener Platz?
Boxi only really works together with its Kiez.
Walk along Krossener Straße and Grünberger Straße, explore the side streets and keep going towards Simon-Dach-Straße. If you want to see more of Friedrichshain afterwards, you can extend your walk towards Warschauer Straße, the East Side Gallery or the RAW-Gelände.
Boxhagener Platz is also interesting if you’re visiting with kids. On the western side, there’s a playground and a roughly 300-square-meter paddling pool with its distinctive animal figures. The origins of the site go back to the 1920s and designs by Berlin garden director Erwin Barth.
For me, this is still one of those parts of Boxi where two versions of the place come together: the square that thousands of visitors now know from travel guides and social media – and the completely ordinary playground where we simply spent our afternoons as kids.
When is the weekly market at Boxhagener Platz?
The weekly market at Boxhagener Platz takes place every Saturday, usually from 9:00 to 15:30.
You’ll find fruit and vegetables, baked goods, meat and fish, as well as regional and international specialties. The weekly market has been held here since 1905.
And actually, the weekly market is one of the parts of Boxi that has kept its role within the Kiez to this day. It’s not exclusively about visitors coming here to experience something. People from the surrounding area come to buy groceries and meet people they’ve sometimes known for years.
The best example is Oma Jutta, our Friedrichshain correspondent. She still regularly goes to the weekly market and has become a familiar and welcome face there.
So if you want to experience Boxhagener Platz as more than just a well-known place in Friedrichshain, Saturday is generally a good time to come. It gets busy and it’s long since stopped being the market I remember from my childhood – but in my opinion, you still get more of everyday Kiez life here than at the much more touristy flea market the following day.
Berlin has quite a few markets like this that are much more than just places to shop. If that’s exactly what interests you, you’ll find a completely different side of Berlin’s market culture in our blog about the Berlin market halls.
When is the flea market at Boxhagener Platz?
The flea market at Boxhagener Platz takes place every Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00. Admission is free. Around the green space, you’ll find everything from books, household items, art and design to secondhand clothing, bags and vinyl records.
The flea market – or Trödelmarkt, as I’d be more likely to call it – is probably one of Berlin’s best-known flea markets. And that’s exactly why I want to give you a more honest take on it.
Because I still give it another chance every now and then. Really.
Maybe it’s also because I still have the old Trödelmarkt in my head. Vinyl records, secondhand stuff, all kinds of people and a Friedrichshain around it that was much rougher.
Today, alongside the occasional Berliner, a lot of tourists and recent arrivals come to Boxi, and back in 2004, the market was already reduced in size following complaints from new residents.
As a result, according to historical records, the share of professional traders increased compared with private sellers.
That doesn’t mean you won’t find anything there anymore. Especially if you like vintage, vinyl, books or simply flea markets, you can easily spend an hour or two browsing.
You just shouldn’t go there expecting to find a completely undiscovered Berlin Kiez flea market.
Is the flea market at Boxhagener Platz worth visiting?
Yes, the flea market at Boxhagener Platz can be worth visiting – especially because of its size, variety and location right in the heart of Friedrichshain. However, if you’re looking for a particularly authentic Berlin flea market, there are more authentic alternatives in my view.
And that’s exactly where the problem lies for me personally these days.
Boxi hasn’t suddenly become bad. It has changed. And with it, the crowd, the vendors and the entire Kiez have changed. When I walk across the square on a Sunday today, it simply doesn’t feel the same as it used to.
That’s why you’ll rarely find me at the flea market these days.
But I also don’t want to give you some supposed “hidden gem” just for the sake of having one here. In our Berlin Upgrade 2026, we’ve pre-selected Berlin’s markets and many other places that we’d be more likely to recommend today.
If you’re in Friedrichshain on a Sunday anyway, there’s still little reason not to take a walk around Boxi. Afterwards, though, I wouldn’t head straight off to the next attraction. The streets around the square are a big part of the actual experience.
Which restaurants near Boxhagener Platz are worth visiting?
Around Boxhagener Platz, you’ll find a wide range of restaurants and casual food spots – from Vietnamese and vegan food to kumpir and burgers. There are particularly plenty of places to eat along Krossener Straße, Gabriel-Max-Straße and the surrounding streets right by Boxi.
On Krossener Straße, for example, you’ll find 1990 Vegan Living, serving vegan Vietnamese dishes and small bowls to share. A few doors down, Patta serves kumpir – large stuffed baked potatoes.
Burgeramt and Neumanns are also located around the square. The latter is particularly known for breakfast and pretty elaborate open-faced sandwiches. For coffee, breakfast and sandwiches, there’s also Silo on Gabriel-Max-Straße.
But generally, my advice around Boxi is: walk around a bit.
The food scene doesn’t stop at the four sides of the square. Krossener Straße, Grünberger Straße and the smaller streets behind them are all part of it. And if there’s a line outside somewhere made up mostly of people holding their phones because some Reel has just gone viral, you’re perfectly allowed to walk another 100 meters in Berlin.
Most of the time, you won’t starve.
What bars are there around Boxhagener Platz?
Boxhagener Platz sits right in the middle of one of Friedrichshain’s best-known nightlife areas. Around Boxi, you’ll find classic pubs, cocktail bars, Spätis and bars with dance floors – especially towards Boxhagener Straße, Wühlischstraße and the Simon-Dach-Kiez.
I spent many nights here when I was younger.
One of the better-known places is Booze on Boxhagener Straße, which focuses more on cocktails and high-quality spirits. Alternatively, my personal Berlin recommendations would be Sohnemann or Goldfisch Bar.
If you prefer something less fancy and more like a classic Friedrichshain pub, Hase on Gabriel-Max-Straße is a small bar with beer, table football, football and metal. Alternatively, there’s Dachkammer and Krass böser Wolf.
A little further away is Süß war gestern on Wühlischstraße, where the bar and dance floor blend into one. And if you continue towards Warschauer Straße afterwards, you’ll eventually end up at the RAW-Gelände and right in the middle of Friedrichshain’s nightlife anyway.
But with all my criticism of today’s Boxi, I also have to be fair here:
I still regularly go to bars and Spätis around the square myself.
So I’m not sitting somewhere telling you that everything in Friedrichshain has been shit since 2010.
There are still good places, good nights and corners I like. It’s just the overall feeling that has changed. And to understand why I still go for drinks around Boxi today but wouldn’t necessarily want to live there anymore, we need to go back a little.
Because the way this square has changed tells you quite a lot about how Friedrichshain as a whole has changed.
How did Boxhagener Platz come about?
Boxhagener Platz was created in the early 20th century and received its current name as early as 1900. Before that, the area was known as “Platz D”; the name Boxhagener Platz comes from the former Boxhagen estate. The square was completed in 1903.
Boxi emerged at a time when growing industry was turning the area into a densely built-up working-class neighborhood. So the square was never intended to be a grand, representative Berlin square. It sat right in the middle of a residential area and became a place for the people who lived around it.
It fits that the weekly market has been held here since 1905. The playground and the roughly 300-square-meter paddling pool have also been part of the square since around 1925. The latter was designed according to plans by garden director Erwin Barth.
Another small Berlin curiosity still stands on Boxi today: the so-called Café Achteck. Behind the charming name is a historic cast-iron public urinal. The toilet structure burned out in 1992, was later reconstructed and reopened in 2000.
You can tell from that alone: Boxhagener Platz has always been more everyday Berlin than postcard Berlin.
Why has Boxhagener Platz changed so much?
Boxhagener Platz has changed mainly along with the surrounding Friedrichshain Kiez. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, squats and alternative structures shaped the area, followed later by renovations, new residents and an ongoing process of gentrification.
Today, very different ideas of what Friedrichshain should look like and how it should function come together at Boxi.
And now we’re getting to the part where I’m probably more emotional than in any other section of this blog.
You know me. I’m actually one of those Berliners who doesn’t automatically think every change caused by gentrification is shit. Renovating buildings, taking care of public spaces or seeing a neighborhood develop can have its advantages too.
But when it comes to Boxi, I still want to say this very clearly: This is no longer my Boxhagener Platz.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the area around Boxi was heavily shaped by squats. One well-known chapter from this period was the eviction of Mainzer Straße in 1990. Directly opposite Boxhagener Platz, the legalized housing project at Grünberger Straße 73 remains a relic of that era to this day.
The Friedrichshain of my childhood was full of punks, record stores, small shops and all kinds of different people.
Not everything about it was romantic, and certainly not everything was better. But it was raw, direct and had that Berliner Schnauze people now like to recreate for some kind of marketing concept.
Today, I’d describe a lot of what you find around Boxi as artificially hip and all about seeing and being seen.
That is, of course, my personal perception. But the changes in the neighborhood itself can certainly be traced.
From working-class neighborhood to trendy Kiez
The Kiez around Boxhagener Platz developed from a former working-class neighborhood, through a period of Friedrichshain heavily shaped by the years after reunification, into one of Berlin’s best-known residential and nightlife areas.
Especially from the 1990s and 2000s onwards, many buildings were renovated and commercial spaces were rented out to new tenants.
From 1999 to 2005, the area around Boxhagener Platz even had its own neighborhood management program. This was introduced in response to social and demographic developments, including an increasing number of families with children and working residents moving away. At the same time, with around 18,500 residents living across 75 hectares, the neighborhood was one of the city’s more densely populated areas.
There’s an interesting detail that’s easy to overlook when you look at Boxi today: even back then, there were already plenty of small one- and two-room apartments here.
That meant turnover among residents was relatively high anyway. So the Kiez was never this completely unchanging Friedrichshain village that it might be romanticized as in hindsight.
Still, the mix of people has visibly changed. And with it, the businesses, the crowd and the atmosphere on the streets.
As a kid and teenager, I actually dreamed of one day moving back to live right by Boxhagener Platz. Today, I can’t imagine doing that anymore.
That probably says more about how Boxi has changed than any statistic ever could.
Maybe that’s actually the most interesting thing about Boxhagener Platz: in one single place, you can get a pretty good sense of how Berlin is changing.
When is the best time to visit Boxhagener Platz?
Boxhagener Platz is particularly worth visiting on Saturdays for the weekly market and on Sundays for the well-known flea market. If you’d rather experience the square and the surrounding Kiez, I’d come by during the week or on a warm evening.
So the best time really depends on what you’re looking for.
If you want to experience the well-known Boxi when it’s busy, come on the weekend. If you’d rather explore Friedrichshain at a more relaxed pace, walk around on a regular weekday, grab something to eat somewhere and wander through the side streets.
In summer, you can also easily combine a visit with Volkspark Friedrichshain. If you head towards the Spree instead, Warschauer Straße and Oberbaumbrücke will quickly take you into a completely different part of the district.
I also wouldn’t set aside half a day in Berlin just for Boxhagener Platz.
The square itself simply doesn’t offer enough for that.
As a starting point for a few hours in Friedrichshain, though, it works pretty well.
Is Boxhagener Platz worth visiting?
Yes, Boxhagener Platz is worth visiting if you want to explore Friedrichshain, walk around one of the markets or continue through the surrounding Kiez afterwards.
As a standalone Berlin attraction, though, I wouldn’t make a big detour just for Boxi.
And maybe that’s the fairest answer I can give you.
Personally, I miss the old Boxi. I miss that slightly dirtier, more unconventional Friedrichshain with its punks, record stores, street burgers and Berliner Schnauze.
And if you’re looking for me on a Sunday, you probably won’t find me at the flea market.
Still, I’m regularly around Boxi, sitting in bars or grabbing a beer from a Späti.
So the square is still part of my Berlin. Just in a different way than it used to be.
And if you’re coming to Friedrichshain for the first time, go and see it. But don’t just head to Boxi, take a photo and leave again. Walk through the surrounding streets, look at how the area has changed and make up your own mind.
Because maybe that’s exactly what makes Boxhagener Platz interesting today: it’s no longer the Friedrichshain it once was.
If you’re interested in more places like this, check out our blogs about the Monbijou Theater or Holzmarkt 25.
Berlin is not a tourist attraction. Berlin is a city.
See you in the honest Berlin – or right here in the next blog.
Take care 🖤
MOST IMAGES IN THIS ARTICLE ARE SAMPLE IMAGES AND WERE NOT TAKEN AT THE PLACES DESCRIBED.
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