Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Definitely one of the most impressive places to visit in Berlin is the Berlin wall.  Of course, the wall existed throughout the city, and most of it is commemorated by stones in the ground, crossing streets, sidewalks, buildings.

A piece of the Berlin wall in Potsdamer Platz. This was one of Germany's busiest intersections between the two Great Wars. But after the wall went up, it became a ghost town.

The wall passed just to the west of the famous Brandenburger Tor (see the next post), which was where Reagan made his famous speech. There is, however, an official Berlin Wall memorial site, that has preserved several blocks of the "death strip" (the no-man's land between two walls) and a block of the wall itself.

Portion of the Wall along Bernaer Straße, site of the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall memorial site).

View of the wall and the "death strip" along Bernauer Straße  from the roof of the museum building across the street.

One of the things I found interesting was the fact that in the building up of the wall over the years, increasing the security, an entire church was caught in no-man's-land. Ironically, it was the Church of Reconciliation. The following photo shows the rapid change to the wall near the church site.

Evolution of the wall near the Church of Reconciliation.

In 1985, the church was demolished, but after the wall fell, another building was erected on the original site, and it can be seen toward the left in the panorama above.

It's a powerful experience to just walk around the area. Even though it is gone, the feeling one gets is not describable.