Inside Tresor Berlin: Photos, Videos and the Story of the Vault (2026)
Photos and videos from inside Tresor Berlin: the vault floor behind the steel bars, Globus, the Kraftwerk hall above, the documentaries that went inside, and how a 1991 bank vault became Berlin's founding techno club.
Tresor is the club that made Berlin a techno city, and for most of its 35 years it has been as hard to see inside as Berghain. Phones are covered at the door, the vault floor is deliberately dark and the club has never run a glossy photo feed. What does exist is scattered: a handful of licensed photographs, a few walk-through videos, an official documentary and a Resident Advisor film. This page gathers all of it, explains what each room actually looks like, and tells the story of how a bank vault under a bombed department store became a power station. It is the third part of our Berlin series, after photos and videos from inside Berghain and inside KitKatClub.
Why there are so few photos from inside Tresor
Like almost every serious Berlin club, Tresor does not allow photography on the dancefloor, and cameras are usually covered with a sticker at the cloakroom. The policy is older than Berghain’s: in the 1990s the original vault was so dark and so foggy that photographs barely worked anyway, which is why the few that survive from Leipziger Straße look like stills from a horror film. At Kraftwerk, the current home since 2007, the vault floor is still lit mostly by strobe and a few red bulbs, the Globus floor upstairs is only slightly brighter, and the tunnel between the entrance and the floors is pure strobe. The photos below were taken by press and visitors with permission, and have been published under Creative Commons licences; we have not used leaked phone footage.
Photos from inside Tresor
This is the image people mean when they say Tresor. The steel bars in front of the DJ booth came from the safe-deposit room of the old Wertheim department store, where the club opened in 1991, and were reinstalled in the basement of Kraftwerk in 2007. The booth is low, the ceiling is low, and the crowd stands a metre from the DJ with nothing but the bars between them.
Tresor occupies the basement and ground floor of Kraftwerk; the enormous hall above it is a separate venue used for Berlin Atonal, Tresor’s own anniversary festivals, art installations and concerts. When people post dramatic photos of concrete columns and 20-metre ceilings and call it Tresor, this is the room they mean. The club itself is far smaller, darker and lower.
Videos filmed inside Tresor
A short walk-through from 2018 that has been watched more than a million times is the best quick look at the tunnel, the vault and the Globus floor.
For the sound, a live set recorded on the vault floor in December 2014.
The documentaries that went inside
Sub Berlin: The Story of Tresor (2008, directed by Tilmann Künzel) is the official history, with footage from the Leipziger Straße years that exists nowhere else, interviews with Dimitri Hegemann and the Detroit and Berlin artists who played the vault, and the road to Kraftwerk. The club put the full film on its own channel in 2023.
Tresor: A Story of Survival is Resident Advisor’s 2023 short film on how the club has kept going for more than three decades, with footage from inside Kraftwerk.
The story of the vault
1991: a bank vault under a bombed department store
In March 1991, five months after reunification, Dimitri Hegemann and his partners from the UFO club opened Tresor in the safe-deposit vault of the former Wertheim department store on Leipziger Straße, a few hundred metres from where the Wall had stood. The vault still had its steel doors, its rows of safe-deposit boxes and no ventilation to speak of. Detroit artists including Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter and the Underground Resistance circle were among its earliest guests, and the Tresor Records label, launched the same year, released the Detroit-Berlin records that gave the city its sound. For the full story of that axis, read what techno music is and our Tresor Records label page.
2005: closed
The land was sold for redevelopment and the vault closed in April 2005 after a final weekend that is still talked about. The steel bars and parts of the vault were taken out and stored for a future home.
2007: Kraftwerk
Tresor reopened on 24 May 2007 in the former Mitte heating power station on Köpenicker Straße, a 1960s concrete monolith that had stood empty since the late 1990s. The club built a new vault in the basement around the old bars, added the Globus floor on the ground level for house and slower techno, the +4Bar as a third space, and the tunnel that connects them. The upper floors became Kraftwerk Berlin, a hall for Atonal, exhibitions and the Tresor 30 anniversary programme in 2021. OHM, a small club in the former battery room, opened in the same building in 2013.
2026
Tresor still opens most weeks on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and is one of the few clubs from the 1990s to have survived Berlin’s run of closures, which we covered in the Clubcommission’s 2026 study. Hegemann, now in his seventies, still owns it and still talks about opening a Tresor in Detroit.
What a night at Tresor is actually like
- The door: firmer than a tourist bar, far softer than Berghain. Dark clothes, a normal attitude and no big groups get most people in. Queues are long on Saturday after 1am and short on Wednesday.
- Entry: usually somewhere between 10 and 20 euros depending on the night and the lineup; check the club’s listings before you go.
- The tunnel: the first thing you see, a long strobe-lit corridor between the entrance and the floors. It was built to disorient and it does.
- Tresor floor: the vault. Low, dark, loud, fast. Hard, industrial and Detroit-leaning techno, the residents and the heritage bookings. This is where the bars are.
- Globus: upstairs, brighter, house and groovier techno. Where you go when the vault gets too much.
- +4Bar: the chill-out space, quieter, with its own small programme.
- Timing: doors around midnight, peak from 3am, closing late morning at weekends.
Tresor vs Berghain
| Tresor | Berghain | |
|---|---|---|
| Opened | 1991 (Kraftwerk since 2007) | 2004 |
| Building | Power station, Mitte | Power station, Friedrichshain |
| Door | Selective but reasonable | Famously unpredictable |
| Photos | Covered at the door | Covered at the door |
| Sound | Hard, Detroit, industrial | Berghain techno, Panorama Bar house |
| Nights | Usually Wed, Fri, Sat | Fri, Sat into Monday |
| Best for | History and heritage DJs | The marathon |
If Berghain is the question, read how to get into Berghain. If you want Berlin’s other rooms, our best techno clubs in Berlin covers them.
Tresor FAQ
Can you take photos inside Tresor?
No. Phone cameras are covered at the door and photography on the floors is not allowed. The photos on this page are licensed press and visitor images published on Wikimedia Commons.
Where is Tresor?
Köpenicker Straße 70, 10179 Berlin, in the Kraftwerk Berlin building between Mitte and Kreuzberg. The nearest station is Heinrich-Heine-Straße on the U8.
Is Tresor the same as Kraftwerk Berlin?
Same building, different venues. Tresor is the club in the basement and ground floor; Kraftwerk Berlin is the hall above it, used for festivals, exhibitions and concerts.
Is Tresor still open in 2026?
Yes, usually three nights a week, with Tresor Records and the Tresor 30 programme still run from the same building.
What music is played at Tresor?
Techno in the Detroit and Berlin tradition on the vault floor, with harder and industrial bookings on some nights; house and slower techno on Globus.
What happened to the original Tresor on Leipziger Straße?
It closed in April 2005 and the site was redeveloped. The bars and parts of the vault were moved to Kraftwerk.
The TA view
Berghain gets the mythology, but Tresor is the reason Berlin has a techno scene at all. The vault on Leipziger Straße is where Detroit met East Berlin in 1991, and the bars that stood between Jeff Mills and the crowd then stand between tonight’s resident and the crowd now. It is less of an ordeal than Berghain, which is exactly why first-time visitors should start here: you will get in, you will hear the music the city was built on, and you will understand what the rest of Berlin is imitating. Go on a Wednesday if you want the room to yourself.
Keep exploring: Tresor club page · Tresor Records · inside Berghain · inside KitKatClub · best techno clubs in Berlin · techno clubs
