Fly at c. 9.00am from London Heathrow to Berlin Tegel. Take an orientation tour by coach: Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz and Unter den Linden. Visit the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Walk through the oldest part of the city to ‘Museums Island’, a group of major museum buildings. Visit the Neues Museum, recently restored and recreated by British architect David Chipperfield, and the Alte Nationalgalerie with European painting of the 19th century including the finest collection of German Romantics. Free afternoon. Opera at the Staatsoper: Eugen Onegin (Tchaikovsky), Pietari Inkinen (conductor), Simone Schröder (Larina), Anna Samuil (Tatjana), Roman Trekel (Eugen Onegin).

Schloss Charlottenburg, the earliest major building in Berlin, is an outstanding Baroque and Rococo palace with splendid interiors. Free afternoon. Concert at the Philharmonie with the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle (conductor): Debussy, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune; Dvořák, The Golden Spinning-Wheel; Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht; Elgar, Enigma Variations.

Potsdamer Platz, for 50 years a great expanse of wasteland, became in the 1990s Europe’s greatest building project with an array of international architects participating. The ‘Kulturforum’ developed before 1989 on land close to the Wall as the site for several major museums, the State Library and Philharmonie. Visit the Gemäldegalerie, one of Europe’s major collections of Old Masters. Free afternoon. Opera at the Staatsoper; The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Daniel Barenboim (conductor), Artur Rucinski (Graf Almaviva), Dorothea Röschmann (Gräfin Almaviva), Anna Prohaska (Susanna), Vito Priante (Figaro), Christine Schäfer (Cherubino).

Walk to the Pergamon Museum, home of one of the world’s finest collections of Near Eastern antiquities including the eponymous Hellenistic altar from Anatolia. Free afternoon: suggested visits include the Altes Museum (Classical sculpture and artefacts) and the Bode Museum (sculpture and paintings). Opera at the Deutsche Oper: A Masked Ball (Verdi), Jacques Lacombe (conductor), Yonghoon Lee (Gustav III, King of Sweden), Thomas Hampson (Count Ankarstöm), Tatjana Serjan (Amelia), Ewa Wolak (Ulrika Arvedson), Heidi Stober (Oscar), Simon Pauly (Christian).

Morning concert at the Staatsoper (Schillertheater) with Daniel Baremboim (piano): Schubert, selected works. Lunch in the rooftop restaurant in the Reichstag, with the opportunity (without queuing) to walk around Foster’s dome. Fly at c. 6.00pm arriving London Heathrow at c. 7.10pm.