Berlin Travel Guide
The Berlin Wall and Cold War Berlin
A focused guide to the history of the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1989 and the best places to see it today — Bernauer Strasse, the East Side Gallery, the Brandenburg Gate, the DDR Museum and more — with a one-day route.
For twenty-eight years, from August 1961 to November 1989, a wall ran through the middle of Berlin, dividing families, streets and even cemeteries, and turning West Berlin into an island surrounded by East Germany. The Wall is the defining story of modern Berlin, and most visitors want to see it. But it is surprisingly hard to find: within months of its fall, Berliners and souvenir hunters had chipped away much of it, and the authorities demolished most of the rest. What remains is scattered, and understanding it requires knowing where to look. Here is the history in brief and the places that tell it best.
Why the Wall was built. After 1945, Berlin was divided into four sectors controlled by the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and France, and in 1949 the Soviet sector became the capital of the new German Democratic Republic, while the western sectors became part of West Germany in all but name. Through the 1950s, millions of East Germans fled to the West, many of them through Berlin, where the sector borders were still open. To stop the exodus, the East German government, with Soviet approval, closed the border overnight on 13 August 1961, first with barbed wire and then with a wall. Officially it was called the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.
How the border worked. The Wall was not a single wall but a system, constantly improved over the years: an inner wall facing the East, a death strip with signal fences, floodlights, raked sand, anti-vehicle obstacles, a patrol road and watchtowers, and an outer wall facing the West, made in its final form of the L-shaped concrete segments that became famous. More than a hundred people were killed at the Berlin Wall trying to cross it, and many more were caught and imprisoned. Others escaped through tunnels, in hidden compartments of cars, across rooftops and by balloon.
How it fell. By 1989, a wave of protest and mass emigration through Hungary had put the East German government under enormous pressure. On the evening of 9 November 1989, a confused announcement at a press conference suggested that East Germans could travel freely, effective immediately; crowds gathered at the border crossings, and late that night the guards at Bornholmer Strasse opened the gates. Within a year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified.
Where to see it: the Berlin Wall Memorial. Start at Bernauer Strasse, the central memorial, where a stretch of the border strip has been preserved with its watchtower, the line of the Wall is traced with steel rods, and the stories of escapes and deaths are told along 1.4 kilometres of open-air exhibition. The viewing tower of the Documentation Center lets you look down on the full system. It is free; the indoor centres are closed on Mondays.
The East Side Gallery. The longest surviving section, about 1.3 kilometres along the Spree in Friedrichshain, was painted by 118 artists from 21 countries after the Wall fell, with images such as the Fraternal Kiss and the Trabant breaking through the Wall. It shows the joy of 1989 and 1990 rather than the reality of the border, so it pairs perfectly with Bernauer Strasse. It is free and open at all hours.
The Brandenburg Gate and the government quarter. The gate stood inside the border strip for twenty-eight years and became the symbol of reunification. A line of cobblestones on the road on its western side, and in many places across the city, marks where the Wall ran. By the Reichstag, white crosses on the riverbank remember people killed at the Wall, and the Reichstag dome, rebuilt after reunification, looks out over the former border.
Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdamer Platz. Checkpoint Charlie, the famous crossing point for foreigners and diplomats on Friedrichstrasse, is now a busy tourist spot with a replica guardhouse and photo opportunities; an open-air exhibition explains its history and the tense stand-off of American and Soviet tanks in October 1961. Potsdamer Platz, once the busiest square in Europe and then a wasteland in the death strip, has segments of the Wall outside its station.
Life in the East. To understand what the Wall enclosed, visit the DDR Museum, opposite Berlin Cathedral, where you can sit in a Trabant, explore a prefab flat and learn about the Stasi. For a more sobering experience, the former Stasi prison at Hohenschoenhausen and the Stasi Museum in the former Ministry for State Security in Lichtenberg are powerful, though further out. The Palace of Tears at Friedrichstrasse station, the former departure hall for travellers from East to West, has a free exhibition on the border crossings.
A one-day route. Begin at Bernauer Strasse in the morning, then take the S-Bahn to Friedrichstrasse for the Palace of Tears. Walk to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, follow the cobblestone line south to Potsdamer Platz, and continue to Checkpoint Charlie. After lunch, visit the DDR Museum, then take the S-Bahn to Ostbahnhof for the East Side Gallery at golden hour, ending at the Oberbaum Bridge. For a deeper look, add a guided Cold War tour, or rent a bike to follow the Berlin Wall Trail, which traces the former border around West Berlin for about 160 kilometres.