Lichtenberg has a lot of charm, but it is mostly hidden behind concrete buildings and socialist architecture. The first large prefabricated housing estate of East Berlin was built here in the 1970s in the Fennpfuhl neighborhood. This housing estate was considered an "exercise" for the later construction of the concrete housing estates in Marzahn and Hohenschönhausen. The district's many prefabricated apartment buildings are embedded in a lot of nature. In between them, an architectural hodgepodge of old buildings and single-family homes is revealed.

Meanwhile, the Karlshorst neighborhood with its many villas is considered one of the most attractive residential areas in the east of Berlin. Karlshorst is also home to the Karlshorst horse race track. The adjacent Friedrichsfelde houses Berlin's second zoological garden, the Tierpark Berlin, which is the largest of its kind in Europe. Also worth seeing is the Stasi Research and Memorial Site on Normannenstraße, which once housed the official state security service of East Germany.

The larger district of Lichtenberg is divided into the districts Lichtenberg, Fennpfuhl, Karlshorst, Friedrichsfelde, and Rummelsburg.