East Side Gallery

When you think of Berlin, the first word likely to spring to mind is Wall. But over a decade after being torn down by angry East Germans, there is not much of the Berlin Wall left standing in present-day Berlin.

The longest section of the Wall to be spared (1.3km) runs parallel to the River Spree between Kreuzberg in the West and Friedrichshain in the East. In the months following the fall of the Wall in 1989, 118 artists from all over the world flocked here to pay their artistic tribute to the downfall of communism. The result - an open-air gallery containing a host of colourful and imaginative images - some satirical, some shocking and others unintelligible.

The East Side Gallery is a must for first-time visitors to the city. The barren wasteland which surrounds the Wall is oddly fitting and gives you a good idea of how the Wall, surrounded by a 10 metre-wide, heavily mined death strip, would have appeared several decades ago.

Yet the current condition of the gallery gives cause for concern. Many of the paintings have been disfigured by souvenir-hunters keen to take a chunk of Wall home with them, while the weather has taken its toll on the rest.

Admission: free

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• Attraction Type: Monuments and Landmarks

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