"The city’s official memorial to the Berlin Wall is along Bernauer Strasse, where the wall once divided the eastern districts of Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte from the West Berlin district of Wedding. The half-mile stretch functions as a kind of open-air museum, peppered with large-scale photos showing how the wall once looked at relevant intersections; a reconstruction of the so-called Death Strip that ran between the wall’s two main barriers; and maps displaying escape tunnel routes. A touching shrine honors the 139 lives cut short by the wall’s existence (some while attempting to escape), and a documentation center has a platform with views over the whole memorial and an exhibition about the wall’s development and downfall. An associated bookshop is farther along the street."
