23 October 2026 · 2 min read
Where you can still see the Berlin Wall
It stood for 28 years and fell in a night. Most of it is gone, but if you know where to look, the Wall is still all over Berlin.
On the night of 13 August 1961, East German soldiers began closing the border through the middle of Berlin. By morning, streets were cut in half and families were separated by barbed wire that would become a concrete wall. It stood for 28 years, until the evening of 9 November 1989, when the border opened and people climbed onto it with hammers.
Most of the Wall was torn down within a few years. But it hasn't disappeared, and the places where it survives are some of the most moving in Europe.
East Side Gallery: the longest piece left
Along the Spree river in Friedrichshain runs the longest surviving stretch, about 1.3 kilometres. In 1990, artists from around the world painted its eastern side, the side that East Berliners had never been allowed to approach. Look for the famous Fraternal Kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker.
Go early in the morning or on a weekday evening: by midday the most famous murals have a crowd taking the same photo.
Bernauer Straße: where you understand it
If you only see one place, make it the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße. Here the border ran along the front of the houses: people jumped from their windows to the western pavement in the first weeks.
A section has been kept exactly as it was, with the inner wall, the "death strip" and the watchtower, and you can look down on it from the viewing platform across the road. Small markers in the ground show where escape tunnels were dug.
The line that runs through the city
Watch the pavement as you walk around central Berlin. A double row of cobblestones marks where the Wall used to stand. It crosses roads, squares and courtyards, and it is the easiest way to understand how completely the city was divided.
Two more
- Checkpoint Charlie: the guard hut is a replica and the area is busy, but the museum next to it tells the escape stories well.
- Mauerpark: "Wall Park" sits on part of the old death strip. On Sundays there is a flea market, and in summer a big open-air karaoke in the amphitheatre.
Our Berlin guide has more of the city, and decide can put the Wall sites into a plan that makes sense on the map.