Berlin Wall

In my opinion, the Berlin Wall is quintessential in defining what makes Berlin, Berlin. 

I had originally thought the Berlin Wall was just one long wall that split East Berlin from West Berlin. 

The truth is, the word "wall" does not describe the full extent of the barrier which cut Berlin into two halves from 1961 to 1989. 

The Berlin Wall was, in fact, a wide corridor between two walls, stretching about 160km long. One wall marked the actual border on the west side of the corridor, while a second wall closed off the corridor to the east. The death strip, which included a narrow sentry path for the border guards of the GDR, lay in between. 

A good example of this can be seen at Bernauer Straße, which has become the central place to remember the Berlin Wall. Inaugurated in 1998, the war memorial is a 70 meter long segment of the original border corridor, inaccessible now as it was then.

The wounds inflicted here was so deep that it became a symbol of the division of Berlin. Whole rows of houses, or church, a train station and even parts of the graveyard in the one's thriving neighbourhood fell victim to the border fortifications. 

A documentation centre was added in 1999. The Chapel of Reconciliation followed in 2000 and commemorates the large Church of Reconciliation detonated in 1985.

2 other places in Berlin still stands a piece of the original wall, the longest being the East Side Gallery, which stretches 1.3km, and a 200m length at the Topography of Terror.

The East Side Gallery is an open-air art gallery on the banks of the Spree in Friedrichshain.

Immediately after the wall came down, 118 artists from 21 countries began painting the East Side Gallery, and it officially opened as an open air gallery on 28 September 1990.

While at East Side Gallery, I also came across a "Turn Hate Into Love" sculpture, which I really like.

If you look closely, both sculpture are the same, except that one says "Hate" and the other "Love" depending on which side you read it from.

Also, make sure to check out the Oberbaum Bridge, which was one of the key bridges used to connect East to West Side Berlin before.

There's also a very small memorial at the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus. 

The numbers recorded on it marks the number of people that had died in the year due to the Berlin Wall.