Reichtag Tour

Here is the site to get a reservation to visit the dome and other visitor information.
http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/visits/kuppel/kupp/245686

The visit to the dome includes a free audio guide and is open daily. The guided tours don't run while parliament is in session. I guess the benefit of visiting with a different tour company would be if you could were not able to reserve directly through the government link.

The German government conducts the guided tours of the Reichstag for free to visitors. That includes English language tours. The guided tours do cover large areas of the building that cannot be accessed any other way. You get to see working offices, the parliament, art work, Russian graffiti ... For me, that was one of the highlights of my trip to Berlin! These tours cannot run while parliament is in session. They do need prior reservation. You can do it yourself by contacting the visitor office in the link mentioned in the answer above. Correspondence can take place in English. Or you can hire a tour company to do that on your behalf and pay their fee.

Visiting the glass dome is also free and provides and audio guide for a self-guided tour. Prior reservation is also necessary. Access to the glass dome does not depend on whether parliament is in session. However they do have certain days of closure for major holidays, cleaning and maintenance and - not easy to predict - in very poor weather conditions (in particular icy surfaces). Here are some dates to be aware of:

"The roof terrace and the dome are closed all day on 24 December and from 16.00 hrs onwards on 31 December.
In addition, the dome is closed to visitors from 9 to 13 March, from 6 to 10 July, from 20 to 24 July and from 19 to 23 October to allow cleaning and maintenance work to be carried out. The roof terrace can still be visited when the dome is closed."

Thank you for your replies and especially Beatrix for your very informative reply.

Tours are not conducted while Parliament is in session, so you could try for June 4-7 or 13-14. Definitely book it yourself on-line; it's really easy and free. If you take the 90-minute tour, it also includes access to the dome and a free audioguide. I did two 90-minute tours of the Reichstag (May 2013 and March 2014) and, other than spending about 30 minutes in the main Parliament chamber, they ended up being different. In May 2013, the guide took us to different parts of the Reichstag building and then through an underground passage to another ultramodern office building in the government complex. In the March 2014 tour, the guide took us to a small second floor library in the Reichstag with an outdoor balcony that overlooked the government complex and the Spree River; afterwards, we walked right by Angela Merkel's office, with it's Russian writing on the walls on both sides of her office door, preserved from the WW2 battle for the Reichstag. There also is similar writing in a hallway near where you wait for your guide to arrive before the tour begins. Very interesting, especially if you read Russian. The guide (who did) translated some of the messages (including one from a soldier from Stalingrad alluding to payback for what the Germans did to his hometown).

I will be in Berlin the first week of May. The website has no available tours but they don't seem to be in session during that time. Any alternative ways to get inside the dome?

iamchriszukowski…………check back on web site again. I just booked a visit to the Dome (not guided) on Wednesday (will be there in May). I did not check on guided tours since I had already booked it a couple of months ago. Keep checking….the "not guided" tours were not posted for quite a while. Hope this helps.