A local treasure, the stylish, elegant and comfortable Delphi Filmpalast housed Berlin's biggest cinema screen when it opened in 1949 on land previously occupied by the famous and similarly named dance hall, which was destroyed in the war. The reinvention of the site as a movie theatre ('Kino') was down to cineaste Walter Jonigkeit, who knew the movie business inside and out and had run a cinema in the Unter den Linden as early as 1932. The Delphi opened in 1949 with Alexander Korda&...
A local treasure, the stylish, elegant and comfortable Delphi Filmpalast housed Berlin's biggest cinema screen when it opened in 1949 on land previously occupied by the famous and similarly named dance hall, which was destroyed in the war. The reinvention of the site as a movie theatre ('Kino') was down to cineaste Walter Jonigkeit, who knew the movie business inside and out and had run a cinema in the Unter den Linden as early as 1932. The Delphi opened in 1949 with Alexander Korda's THAT HAMILTON WOMAN starring Viven Leigh and Laurence Olivier. Despite cinema's ever changing fortunes and threats of closure, Jonigkeit ran the Delphi with partners George Monastery and Claus Boje until his death in 2009, aged 102. His legacy is assured as long as Berliners want to see films directed by the likes of Woody Allen, David Lynch, Detlev Buck, James Ivory, Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, Tom Twyker and Wim Wenders, not to mention the lesser-knowns. In September 2017 the Yorck Kinogruppe opened the neighbouring seven-theatre sibling Delphi LUX cinema (Kantstraße 10), offering modern plushness and the latest digital technology. 2021: renovated foyer and a new 4K laser projector. U-Bahn/S-Bahn: Zoologischer Garten. U-Bahn: Kurfürstendamm.