A mad dash across the outskirts of Berlin from Krampnitz, and I arrived at Beelitz Heilstätten, just outside the small town of Beelitz. I had a car with satnav built in. It was my first experience with satnav, and one couldn't really say anything negative about it. It gets you from a to b without having to think much. A bit like a remote control saves you burning those precious calories getting off the couch to swap channels on the gogglebox. That's kind of the problem, as the satnav takes some of the sadistic joy out of the journey. Taking wrong roads and directions, missing signs. All the infuriating fun of a driving trip. Which is why I didn't look at many posts or maps of this place before I came here. If you study a place too hard, it becomes less of an adventure, less of an opportunity to truly explore. Which is what it's all about, n'est pas?

Built in 1898, this disused hospital complex of approximately 60 buildings located in the district of Beelitz Heilstatten. Between 1898 and 1930 the complex served as a sanatorium for lung diseases, generally housing those with then-fatal conditions such as tuberculosis.

During the first world war it served as a field hospital that treated the earliest casualties of such new weapons as machine guns and mustard gas. During this time it also treated a young soldier by the name of Adolf Hitler, who had been blinded by a British gas attack and wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme (This earned him the Iron Cross).

Ironically, these experiences and his successful treatment would set the stage for the hospital to once again be used as a field hospital, treating wounded Nazi’s during WWII. Occupied by the Russians in 1945, it served as a Soviet military hospital for the next 50 years until 1995, long after the fall of the Berlin wall. The hospital treated everyone from Communist party members to the disgraced head of the East German government who was sent there after being forced out in 1990. Information source : Atlas Obscura

Consequently I exited from the car and casually walked down the road, before hopping into the site very easily. The first building was very close to the main road, so I was keen to get out of sight. The building showed where a few entrances of the past had been dealt with to prevent re-entry. Fortunately I found one that wasn't sealed very well, and before I knew it, I was poking my torch around the basement of the building. Small corridors I had to bend over to walk in, all lined with white tiles. After a couple of wrong turns, I found myself in this rather awesome room. I'm guessing it was for quite high ranking VIPs or something, for such a huge room with a small bath.

A different view of the room above. The windows look onto the road going past outside.

A hallway in the building above.

A set of stairs on the right of the photo above. The attention to detail is something sadly lacking in modern buildings.

Rooms or 'Salle' on the next floor.

Turn left through the door above, and you enter this cavernous room. Most likely once filled with beds.

On the far side of the building, things were less well kept, and signs of dereliction pervade.

The mesmeric stairs twisting off to the lower roof, encapsulating the the bright suns rays pouring through the tainted steel steps.

Decaying walls and ceiling in a neglected part of the building, outside the windows sits a small quadrangle.

In the above corridor was a hole in the wall, that allowed me to poke my camera through and grab this shot of the solo bath room from on high.

Eventually I popped out onto the roof. And after checking my visibility levels, moved around on the slightly precarious looking roof. The structure in the pic below sits above the large room with a single bath in it. The steps may be missing from the ladder to the top, but it didn't hamper me too much. Inside were some metal rungs to the dome top. Below them was a drop I didn't want to think about. I nervously gripped each metal rung, tugging and wrenching it to check it was 'safe', before ascending to the next step.

I popped my fisheye on the camera in the tiny space afforded by the dome, and cracked off a few pics. The layout becomes more obvious now. Also the previously mentioned internal quadrangles. It wasn't obviously possible how to get into the opposite tower, so I skipped it.

The reason a certain level of stealthyness was needed, RV trucks for a film production. One couldn't find a better location really. Note the clear blue sky here with warm sunshine. An hour later things would be very different.

Dragon like detailing on the roof supports in another Salle.

It was then time to leave the way i'd come, back into the small and tiled service tunnels under the building. I managed to find an even easier way out than I'd entered. It was then a case of creeping about to penetrate deeper into the site.

As with most of the sites I did around Berlin, there was a keen love of providing parking spaces.

The area was complete with a servicing garage, with split coloured walls. I appear to have left access details in the picture, my bad.

The next building I came to was more of a house or hotel type building than anything else. It was marvellously decayed. I liked the light around the stairwell here.

Large open area with check tiled flaws. The floor and curiously the ceiling were also covered in white tiles, common to the buildings on this site.

A darkened stairwell, possibly used as service stairs by the servants of the building.

What's left of one of the rooms, increasing the theory that this was some sort of hotel or place of residence.

When I got outside, the weather had changed rapidly, and it was now hammering down with rain. This is the building explored above.

Due to the pouring rain and poor light, I decided to skip this house, and left the site.

The rain was relentless, and didn't stop, even when the sun came out. The shot below is of the first building I entered, it looks blurred because every time I went to take a shot, it ended up with water on the lens.

After getting soaked feet from the large puddle around the car, it was time to whizz off and try to see the former NSA site on the outside of Berlin.