The Berlin Wall: From Barbed Wire to Gallery

Until the day after construction began, traffic and pedestrians still moved freely through the gate. Then came Barbed Wire Sunday, 13 August 1961, and the border with West Berlin was sealed. The wall ran right past the gate's western side and kept it closed for the whole Wall period. West Berliners gathered on that side to protest, among them mayor Willy Brandt. It reopened on 22 December 1989, when West German chancellor Helmut Kohl walked through to be greeted by East German prime minister Hans Modrow.

Visitor guidance: Stands on Pariser Platz.

The crossing at Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße took its name from the letter C in the NATO alphabet. In October 1961 it nearly became a flashpoint: on 22 October a dispute began over whether East German guards could examine the papers of US diplomat Allan Lightner. By 27 October ten Soviet and ten American tanks stood 100 yards apart on either side. The stand-off ended peacefully on 28 October after a US-Soviet understanding to withdraw them. In August 1962 the checkpoint area also saw the death of the teenager Peter Fechter, shot while trying to escape.

Visitor guidance: Freely visitable on Friedrichstraße.

Friedrichstraße station lay entirely in East Berlin, and this hall beside it was a border crossing between East and West Berlin from 1962 to 1989. Its nickname, the Tränenpalast, means Palace of Tears. Today it is a museum: Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the exhibition on Berlin during the Cold War on 14 September 2011.

Visitor guidance: Museum beside Friedrichstraße station; check opening hours before visiting.

Escapers tunnelled under the Wall here. Another tunnel let 29 East Berliners of all ages creep through to West Berlin, unnoticed by the border guards. Tunnel 57 ended at Strelitzer Straße 55 in the East, and over two nights in October 1964 57 East Germans escaped through it. A border guard, Egon Schultz, was killed. The street's U-Bahn station had become a ghost station when the Wall went up in 1961.

Location precision: The tunnel ended at Strelitzer Straße 55 in the East; the pin marks Bernauer Straße generally.

Visitor guidance: Bernauer Straße is an open public street.

After the Wall opened, a crossing here officially opened at 8.00am on 11 November 1989. Today the memorial here keeps a 60-metre section of the Wall as it stood when it fell. An inscription remembers the city's division from 13 August 1961 to 9 November 1989. The documentation centre building includes a five-story observation tower.

Visitor guidance: Open-air memorial along Bernauer Straße.

In 1990, 105 paintings by artists from all over the world were painted on the east side of the Wall here. The actual border at this point had been the river Spree. It is possibly the largest and longest-lasting open-air gallery in the world. In 2013 a planned demolition of a section was postponed.

Visitor guidance: An open-air stretch along Mühlenstraße that you can walk freely.