Berlin Wall sites of the Berlin Wall Foundation: Bernauer Strasse, East Side Gallery and four more

Six sites, one foundation

The Berlin Wall Foundation (Stiftung Berliner Mauer) runs the Berlin Wall Memorial, the East Side Gallery and four other sites on the Wall and the division of Germany. It was established as a foundation under public law by legislation passed on 17 September 2008, and says it "unites five historical sites": the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse, the Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum, the East Side Gallery, the Günter Litfin Memorial and the Parliament of Trees. It is also developing a memorial site at Checkpoint Charlie, which its site list counts as a sixth location.[2][1] In its own description, the foundation "documents the history of the Berlin Wall and the migration movements from the GDR".[2]

The foundation's visitor information says admission to all its exhibitions is free; public tours, workshops and group offers are charged. The sites are different kinds of place, and the foundation's pages make the differences clear: one preserved stretch of border strip with a documentation centre, one painted section of wall, one museum of flight and emigration, two seasonal memorials and one street crossing where nothing original stands.[2][6]

Berlin Wall Memorial, Bernauer Strasse

The foundation's site page says the memorial runs for 1.4 kilometres along Bernauer Strasse on the former border strip between East and West Berlin, and contains "the last section of the Berlin Wall that has been preserved along with the border grounds behind it".[2] Here the border ran directly in front of the houses on the East Berlin side, so the Wall divided the street itself; residents escaped from their windows in 1961, and the buildings were later evacuated and their openings bricked up.[4]

The memorial is spread over both sides of the street. On the former border strip, the East Berlin side, are the outdoor exhibition, the official monument to the divided city and the victims of communist tyranny, the Window of Remembrance, the Chapel of Reconciliation and the excavated foundations of an apartment building whose façade formed part of the border wall.[3] Opposite, on the side that belonged to West Berlin, are the Visitor Center and the Documentation Center with its observation tower and the permanent exhibition "1961 | 1989. The Berlin Wall". A third part, the exhibition "Border and Ghost Stations in Divided Berlin", is inside Nordbahnhof S-Bahn station.[3]

The foundation's history of the memorial is one of citizens' initiative followed by state recognition. The East Berlin magistrate placed the stretch across the Sophien Cemetery under monument protection on 2 October 1990; the monument was inaugurated on 13 August 1998, the Documentation Center opened on 9 November 1999 and the Chapel of Reconciliation was dedicated in 2000. In 2006 the Berlin Senate's concept for commemorating the Wall declared Bernauer Strasse the central site of remembrance for the division of Berlin.[3] According to the foundation, ten people died in the area around the memorial in connection with the GDR border regime, all in the 1960s.[4]

What the foundation's visitor pages say about a visit:

• Visitors and registered groups are asked to start at the Visitor Center at Bernauer Strasse 119, where an introductory film on the history of the Wall is shown on the upper floor.[5]
• Individual visitors do not need to register, and admission to all exhibitions on Bernauer Strasse is free.[5]
• Eating and drinking are not permitted in the Documentation Center or the Visitor Center, and smoking is not allowed.[5]
• Only assistance dogs may enter the Visitor Center and the Documentation Center exhibition; dogs are allowed on the outdoor grounds on a leash.[5]
• Short prayer services for the victims of the Wall are held in the Chapel of Reconciliation from Tuesday to Friday, and at each one the biography of one victim is read; the foundation's victims page gives the time and says they are open to the public without registration.[12]

East Side Gallery, Mühlenstrasse

The foundation's site page calls the East Side Gallery "the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall", standing between Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaum Bridge, on which 118 artists from 21 countries painted 1.3 kilometres of the former border after the Wall fell.[2] It took responsibility for the site in 2018.[1]

Its history page explains what this wall was. When the Wall went up, the Spree between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg became part of the border strip and its whole width belonged to East Berlin, so the East Side Gallery stands on a section of the Hinterlandmauer, "the inner wall that once faced East Berlin". A section of that inner wall in the cinder blocks of 1961 survives at the Stralauer Platz entrance. The same page names the people who died in the river here, at least five of them while trying to flee, and the West Berlin children who drowned off the Kreuzberg bank in years when rescuers could not intervene.[8]

The foundation's visit page says the East Side Gallery is open around the clock and admission is free; its visitor information point at Mühlenstrasse 73 is the meeting point for guided tours, and the page says there are no lockers or cloakrooms for visitors at the gatehouse.[7]

Marienfelde Refugee Center Museum

This museum, in the former main building of the refugee center that opened in 1953, is about flight and emigration from the GDR.[2] The museum's own page says that between 1949 and 1990 some four million people left the GDR for the Federal Republic, and 1.35 million of them passed through the refugee center in West Berlin.[9] The foundation's site page gives the same figures but prints the end year as "199".[2]

Plan around a closure. The foundation's pages say the museum is being renovated for a new permanent exhibition on flight and migration, will be closed from 21 December 2026, and is scheduled to reopen in mid-2028.[9] On 9 October 2026 its visitor information also listed closure days for renovation work on 13 and 27 October and 17 November 2026.[6]

Günter Litfin Memorial and the Parliament of Trees

The Günter Litfin Memorial at Kieler Eck is in a former command post of the GDR border troops on the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal, set up after the Wall fell as a memorial to Günter Litfin, one of the first victims of the Wall.[2] The foundation added it in 2017.[1]

The Parliament of Trees against War and Violence, on Schiffbauerdamm in the government quarter, is a living memorial created by the artist Ben Wagin in 1990, who secured original pieces of the Wall and planted trees in the former border strip.[2]

Both are seasonal. The foundation's visitor information lists the Litfin Memorial as open on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 May to 5 October, and the Parliament of Trees from Thursday to Sunday between 2 April and 5 October, with a special opening of each on 9 November 2026.[6]

Checkpoint Charlie: a site without its structures

The foundation is direct about what is at Checkpoint Charlie today: no visible traces of the border installations, the GDR border crossing or the Allied checkpoint remain, and the former GDR crossing was demolished and almost completely built over.[2] It is developing a "Forum Checkpoint Charlie" as an educational and memorial site at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, with construction "scheduled to begin in 2030", and meanwhile shows a temporary outdoor exhibition, "Crossing the Iron Curtain", on the square in front of the Asisi panorama "The Wall".[10]

Its history page tells why the corner is known: the US and Soviet tank standoff of October 1961, the Allied checkpoint named after the NATO alphabet, and four people who died in escape attempts near the GDR crossing, among them 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who bled to death at the Wall in 1962. The same page mentions the House at Checkpoint Charlie, a museum run by Rainer Hildebrandt that opened an exhibition on the Wall in 1963; it is not a foundation site, and XTOUR has read nothing from it.[11]

The victims, in the foundation's figures

The foundation's research gives the number of deaths at the Wall as a minimum, and its wording varies slightly between pages. Its victims page says that between 1961 and 1989 "at least 140 people were killed or died at the Wall in connection with the GDR border regime": 101 people trying to flee, 30 people from East and West who were not trying to flee and one Soviet soldier, and eight on-duty GDR border soldiers. The same page counts at least 251 travellers who died during or after passing through Berlin border checkpoints, and 39 people who died at the sector border before the Wall, between 1948 and 1961.[12]

For the inner-German border the foundation does not give one number. It cites current research for "at least 260" deaths, a Free University of Berlin study that found 327 and whose categorisation it calls controversial, and its own estimate of some 650 including those who died in the Baltic Sea.[12] XTOUR reports these as the foundation states them and does not round or reconcile them.

Choosing where to go

XTOUR's reading of the foundation's pages, not a ranking: Bernauer Strasse is the only site where the foundation describes a preserved border strip with the grounds behind the Wall, together with a documentation centre and observation tower.[3] The East Side Gallery is the place to see a long surviving section, but it is the inner wall facing East Berlin, painted after 1989.[8][2] Marienfelde is the foundation's museum of flight and emigration, and closes from 21 December 2026.[9] Kieler Eck and the Parliament of Trees open only in their seasons.[6] Checkpoint Charlie, in the foundation's own account, has no original structures left.[2]

XTOUR does not publish opening hours, routes or travel times between these sites, and holds no accessibility information beyond what the foundation's pages say; check the foundation's visitor information page before going.[6] For how German memorial sites, including the Berlin Wall Memorial, state their own rules, see memorial site conduct in Germany. Other Berlin pages: Museum Island, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and Berlin.