Berlin, long hailed as one of the world's great party cities, is fighting to keep its famed techno clubs alive in the face of soaring prices, shifting tastes and a tightening property market.

For now, the mood is exuberant at Renate, a labyrinthine club with multiple DJs housed in a dimly-lit complex near the Spree river, a Berlin institution which recently celebrated its 18th birthday.

Industrial beats, a pulsating bass and coloured lights fill the dance floor as ever -- but many fear that the music will stop when the club's lease runs out at the end of the year.

British visitor Oscar Lister, 30, said it was "really sad" that it was "probably the last time" he could come to the long-cherished Renate, just like the Watergate club that closed last year.

Maike Schoeneberg, a 33-year-old Berliner, said that "all the clubs that I knew when I came of age are closing. The club culture in Berlin seems like it's going to pieces."

Berlin became a pumping techno and rave hub in the years following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, as an anarchic counterculture moved into........

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