Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, Berlin

The Berlin Wall Memorial is a place of remembrance for Berlin’s division and for the people who died at the Wall. Along Bernauer Straße, the open-air site preserves a 70-metre section of the border system, rebuilt in 1998 and later incorporated into a wider memorial landscape. Behind the concrete barrier, you can see the former border arrangement represented by sand, a lit patrol route, a signal fence and an inner wall; visitors cannot enter this preserved area.

A tower stands within the enclosure as part of the reconstruction. The Window of Remembrance is a 12-metre Corten-steel wall containing 162 openings with portraits of 130 people who were killed or died at the Berlin Wall. Their names and life dates are engraved beneath the images, while a nearby stele commemorates eight border guards who also died there.

The oval Chapel of Reconciliation has a façade made from wooden rods and contains a prayer room built from rammed earth. Materials from the former church on this site, including its bells, were reused. Nearby, rye grows across the former death strip: this art project has been cultivated since 2005, turning a place of lethal control into a living field.