Galeries Lafayette opened its branch at Friedrichstraße in Mitte district back in 1996. The exclusive department store focuses on designer-clothing and french products (for more information about the Galeries Lafayette department store chain you could visit the Freanch store on our website).
The Galeries Lafayette offer on 4 floors and nearly 35,000 square meters a wide and exclusive range of products among the greatest French and international brands. Lafayette Gourmet, located in the basement of the store, offers many French culinary specialties to take away or eat on site, in one of the restaurants. Lafayette Livre proposes, exclusively in French, a large selection of new books and classic literature.
Getting Here:
Subway:
U6: Französische Straße
(directly in front of the main entrance)
U2: Stadtmitte
(in about 3 minutes away)
S, U and Regional Friedrichstrasse station
(in about 6 minutes away)
By bus
Bus lines: 147, 100, 200 and shuttle TXL Tegel airport.
Jean Nouvel designed the Berlin version of the famous Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette. The project was a part of the revitalization of Friedrichstrasse which used to be a street for luxurious shopping and entertainment in Berlin before WWII, but was defunct as a border zone used by the military during separation of Berlin.
The French architect Jean Nouvel built specifically for Galeries Lafayette a modern temple of glass, whose interior is centered around a huge cone, like a contemporary tribute to the famous dome of the Boulevard Haussmann department store in Paris. A part of the façade also features a vertical garden from the artist Patrick Blanc, giving thanks to the plants on the wall, greenery and nature in the street. The floors are sprinkled with transparent glass blocks around the cones, becoming progressively more opaque.
