Berlin Wall and East Side Gallery

Background

The Berlin Wall Memorial, in the Mitte district around Bernauer Straße, is the central site for commemorating the victims of the Berlin Wall, remembering the division of the city from 13 August 1961 to 9 November 1989 and its victims. The redesigned border strip is 1.4 kilometres long and covers 4.4 hectares, centred on the Window of Remembrance, with the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre and the Chapel of Reconciliation. The memorial's open-air exhibition uses Bernauer Straße to tell the story of Berlin's division: at the roadside you can see the excavated foundations of former apartment buildings whose facades formed the border wall until the early 1980s, while reddish weathering-steel bars trace the course of the Wall, escape tunnels and demolished border houses. The East Side Gallery stands on Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain, on the bank of the Spree between Ostbahnhof and Oberbaumbrücke; it is 1,316 metres long and open around the clock. Soon after the Wall fell, 118 artists from 21 countries began painting this stretch, and more than a hundred paintings comment on the political changes of 1989–1990; the most popular are Dmitri Vrubel's Fraternal Kiss and Birgit Kinder's Trabant Breaking Through the Wall. The gallery officially opened as an open-air gallery on 28 September 1990 and gained protected monument status just over a year later.

Local customs

• Walk along Bernauer Straße to see the open-air exhibition and the Window of Remembrance, then learn about the division at the visitor centre and Documentation Centre across the street
• walk the full length of the East Side Gallery along the Spree, viewing the murals one by one and looking out for the two most popular works, Fraternal Kiss and Trabant Breaking Through the Wall.

Travel tips

• The East Side Gallery is an open-air stretch, free to visit and seen entirely on foot
• opening areas and ticket prices for the memorial's facilities are as officially announced. Watch your footing in rain and winter, and bring sun protection and water in summer.
• For the East Side Gallery, take the U-Bahn, S-Bahn or tram to Warschauer Straße or Ostbahnhof
• to walk across the Oberbaumbrücke, take the U1 or U3 to Schlesisches Tor. The Berlin Wall Memorial is near Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station and Mauerpark, and is visited on foot along both sides of Bernauer Straße. You can visit all year: spring to autumn is comfortable for walking, and in winter dress warmly and watch for slippery surfaces
• the outdoor sites depend heavily on the weather, and while you can still walk in the rain, the experience is better on a clear day.