Pankow was sometimes claimed by the Western Allies (United States, United Kingdom, and France) to be the capital of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), while the German Democratic Republic itself considered East Berlin to be its capital.

Between 1945 and 1960, Schönhausen Palace and the nearby Majakowskiring street in the Niederschönhausen locality of Pankow was the home to many members of the East German government.

The fact that "-ow" is rare as an ending for place names in West Germany and – especially in the wrong but common pronunciation /'pankof/ – sounds Slavic or more specifically "Russian" to German ears may have played a role in this use as it carried a connotation of the East German government being a foreign, more specifically Russian/Soviet, puppet regime — a claim right leaning newspapers and politicians often made much more openly than through this mere insinuation and connotation.

In northern Prenzlauer Berg, the Wohnstadt ("residential town") Carl Legien is part of the Berlin Modernist Housing Estates UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since the 2021 municipal elections, the composition of the district government is as follows: Pankow's road network is characterised by three radial axes to and from the city centre at Alexanderplatz - all of them running in a north/north-eastern direction: B96a (Schönhauser Allee/Berliner Straße), B109 (Prenzlauer Allee/Prenzlauer Promenade) and B2 (Greifswalder Straße/Berliner Allee).