The Revolutions of 1989: Gdańsk to Bucharest

The road to 1989 starts here, nine years earlier. On 14 August 1980 workers at the Lenin Shipyard went on strike after the crane operator Anna Walentynowicz was fired months before her retirement. Led by the electrician Lech Wałęsa, they issued 21 demands, and on 31 August the government gave in, allowing the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc: Solidarity. Gate No. 2, the focus of the strike, became its symbol. Beside it stand three 42-metre steel crosses for the workers killed in 1970.

Visitor guidance: The European Solidarity Centre museum stands right behind the gate on Plac Solidarności.

After years of martial law and strikes, the regime sat down with Solidarity. The Round Table talks opened on 6 February 1989 in the Namiestnikowski Palace, today the Presidential Palace, and closed there on 5 April with a deal: Solidarity was legal again, a new Senate would be freely elected, and the opposition could contest 35% of seats in the lower house. On 4 June 1989 Solidarity won every one of those seats and 99 of the 100 Senate seats — the first crack that the rest of the bloc could see.

Visitor guidance: The palace, the Polish president's seat, faces Krakowskie Przedmieście on the Royal Route.

On 19 August 1989 Hungarian opposition groups and Otto von Habsburg's Paneuropean Union held a picnic on the Austrian border near Sopron, and an old border gate was to be opened for three hours as a symbol. Leaflets had reached East German holidaymakers in Hungary. Shortly before 3 p.m. hundreds of them pushed through the wooden gate while the guards held their fire; more than 600 crossed to Austria that day. Within weeks Hungary opened its border for good. The site is now a memorial park.

Visitor guidance: The memorial park lies on the old border road between Sopron and Sankt Margarethen; a commemoration is held every 19 August.

Since the early 1980s the Nikolaikirche had held Monday prayers for peace, and from September 1989 people poured out of them into the streets. On 9 October police and army units were authorised to use force. Still, about 70,000 people marched around the inner ring road chanting "Wir sind das Volk!" — "We are the people!" Facing such numbers, local officials held back. The night is often called the beginning of the end of East Germany.

Visitor guidance: The church is open to visitors; look for the palm-topped columns inside and the replica column outside, raised in 1999 for the Monday demonstrations.

On the evening of 9 November party spokesman Günter Schabowski announced new travel rules on live television and, asked when they applied, said: immediately. Thousands of East Berliners rushed to the Bornholmer Straße crossing. The officer in charge, Harald Jäger, had no orders. At 11:30 p.m., with the crowd too big to hold back, he raised the barrier, and in the next hour about 20,000 people walked over the Bösebrücke into West Berlin. It was the first crossing of the Wall to open.

Visitor guidance: The bridge and the Platz des 9. November 1989 beside it are near Bornholmer Straße S-Bahn station.

On 17 November 1989 students marched from Albertov to remember Jan Opletal, killed by the Nazis fifty years earlier. At about 7:30 p.m. riot police stopped them on Národní třída, boxed them in and beat them. The brutality set off the Velvet Revolution: theatres went on strike, Václav Havel's Civic Forum was founded, and crowds jingled their keys on Wenceslas Square — "time to go home". On 29 December Havel was elected president. A memorial plaque marks the spot at the corner of Mikulandská.

Visitor guidance: The memorial is in the arcade of the house at the corner of Národní and Mikulandská; commemorations are held there every 17 November.

Romania's revolution began over one man. László Tőkés, a Hungarian Reformed pastor who had criticised the regime on foreign television, was to be evicted from his parish flat on 15 December 1989. His parishioners formed a human chain around the building; young Romanians joined them, and by the evening of 16 December the vigil had become an anti-government protest. Troops opened fire in the following days, but by 20 December some 100,000 people filled the city's Opera Square and Timișoara was in open revolt.

Visitor guidance: The Reformed church and parish house are at Strada Timotei Cipariu 1; Victory Square (the old Opera Square) is a short walk away.

On 21 December Nicolae Ceaușescu stood on the balcony of the Central Committee building to address a rally of about 100,000 bused-in workers. A few minutes in, the crowd began to boo; on live television he stopped, baffled, while the broadcast was cut. Fighting broke out across the city. Next day protesters stormed the building and Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled from the roof by helicopter. They were caught near Târgoviște, tried by a military court and shot on 25 December. More than a thousand people died in the revolution.

Visitor guidance: Revolution Square also holds the Memorial of Rebirth, the Athenaeum and the National Museum of Art in the former Royal Palace.