Berghain

The Funktion-One sound system in the main hall and a weekend that runs to Monday morning

A disused heating plant for East Berlin became, after 2004, the reference point for club culture everywhere else. The main hall is eighteen metres high with concrete and steel doing the reverberation, the sound system is maintained like an instrument, and phone cameras are taped over at the door so that what happens inside stays unrecorded.

The door is famously unpredictable and there is no formula. Come in twos rather than sixes, arrive late rather than early, speak the language you actually speak, and accept the decision without argument if it goes against you. A German court has classified the place as a cultural institution rather than a nightclub, which tells you how the city sees it.