There are a few things Berlin is known for and the Berlin Wall is certainly one of them. After the fall of the Nazis in 1945, the city was divided into four zones representing the US, the UK, France (West Germany) and what was then the Soviet Union (East Germany). After growing tensions, the Berlin Wall was constructed by East Germany in 1961 where it remained until the reunification of Germany in 1990.
Separating the capitalist west and the communist east, the Wall split Germany's capital city in two and separated families. It actually reminded me of visiting the DMZ on the borders of North Korea and South Korea last year (blog posts at some point!). It's definitely something you must visit if you're in Berlin, and I'd start with the Berlin Wall Memorial because you're going to get the most well-rounded information from there.
The Berlin Wall Memorial is free and stretches from Bernauer Straße underground station (U-Bahn) down to Nordbahnhof (S-Bahn) if you're arriving via public transport. I walked from my hotel (via Father Carpenter for brunch and the David Hasselhoff Museum) and started at the Bernauer Straße end. The memorial is on both sides of Bernauer Straße and there's plenty of information boards along the way to tell you about the wall. There's also a visitor centre where you can look down on a 70-metre-long section of the original inner wall where a watchtower still remains (pictured above). A great place to start to learn more about the Berlin Wall.
The East Side Gallery bit of the Berlin Wall is not as informational, but it is a lot more colourful. And it's the longest continuous bit of the wall that's left, roughly 0.8 miles long. After the fall of the wall, over 100 artists started painting this part of the wall, putting colourful murals and paintings there. Dmitri Vrubel’s "Fraternal Kiss" is probably the most famous, and definitely the most popular when I visited with the amount of people hanging around there - and replicating the kiss for their own photos.
You'll also find some of the Berlin wall left near the Topography of Terror, which is more broken down and real. There's no street art or graffiti on it here. But I'll tell you more about that bit and the Topography of Terror next time. x
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