The kiss
A kiss between the Soviet and East German leaders — the most famous painting on the wall, and the busiest with photographers.
Freepenguin — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jan M — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jan M — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Stefano Vigorelli — CC0
Yes, this is an original stretch still in place. But the paintings are not from the years of division: they were made after the Wall fell, in 1990, on the eastern face. To see the Wall as it actually worked, with watchtowers and the death strip, go to the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße.
About half an hour walking straight through, an hour if you stop at the paintings and take photographs. Most visitors only walk the first stretch near Warschauer Straße, where the best-known works are.
Some are damaged by graffiti and weather, and the wall has been restored more than once, most substantially in 2009. You will see clean paintings beside scratched ones. That is part of what the place is: a wall in the street, not a picture in a museum.
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The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, about 1.3 kilometres along the bank of the Spree. After the Wall fell in 1989, one hundred and eighteen artists from twenty-one countries painted the eastern side — the side nobody had been allowed to go near before. The paintings have become some of the best-known images of Berlin. The most famous are the kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker, and a Trabant car bursting through the Wall. It is open air, free, and has no gates or opening times — you simply walk along it whenever you like.
A kiss between the Soviet and East German leaders — the most famous painting on the wall, and the busiest with photographers.
A small East German car painted bursting through the wall, standing for the night the border opened in 1989.
The far side of the wall opens onto the Spree and the Oberbaum bridge — a good walk to round off the visit.
Mühlenstraße, 10243 Berlin