Designed by Hans Poelzig and opened in 1929, Kino Babylon is one of Berlin's most important surviving cinema buildings. Built during the final years of the Weimar Republic — when Berlin was a world centre of film culture — it was conceived from the start as a complete cinematic experience, with an orchestra pit, a cinema organ, and an architecture that still carries the memory of that era.

The building survived the Second World War intact and passed through the cultural life of East Berlin, before being restored between 1999 and 2001. The original cinema organ still plays today.