East Side Gallery

The world’s longest gallery – the East Side Gallery – opened on 28 September 1990. Just one week after the fall of the Wall, artists based in Berlin had decided to transform this “Edifice of Inhumanity” into a “Structure against Inhumanity”. After several false starts around Potsdamer Platz, the artists selected a section of Wall along Mühlenstraße for the project in consultation with the responsible East German authorities. 118 artists from 21 countries painted murals on the Wall along a length of 1.3 kilometres. Where only recently a deadly border regime had existed – at least ten people were killed in the border area of the East Side Gallery – this artistic appropriation represented a symbol of international understanding, which continues to attract millions of visitors from all over the world to this day. This artistic takeover marked the departure towards a unified city with a new sense of self: liberal, international and with an affinity for art and culture – but also shaped by the tensions between fringe culture and commercialization, old and new Berliners, financial hardship and cultural capital.