
East Side Gallery
Longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, covered in over a hundred political murals painted by artists worldwide.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the East Side Gallery in Berlin centers on the mural of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker locked in a kiss, painted in 1990 by Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel from a photograph of their actual 1979 embrace. It follows the more than one hundred artists from twenty-one countries who painted this surviving stretch of wall that same year, and the fights to save it since, including a 2009 dispute over whether repainting a damaged mural was itself a violation, and a 2013 clash with developers over a section slated for demolition. Look for the caption written in Russian beneath the kiss itself.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Berlin Wall Memorial
Preserved stretch of Cold War border wall, watchtowers and death strip along a memorial park and open-air museum.
Checkpoint Charlie
Reconstructed Cold War border crossing hut where American and Soviet tanks once faced off in nineteen sixty-one.
Tränenpalast
Former Cold War border checkpoint with narrow inspection booths, now a Berlin Wall history museum.
Oberbaumbrücke
Brick Gothic river bridge and former Cold War border crossing between East and West Berlin.
Wall Museum - Checkpoint Charlie
Cold War museum of Berlin Wall escapes, packed with real balloons, hidden cars and tunnel gear.
Glienicke Bridge
Steel-truss river bridge where Cold War spies were traded across a painted line at dawn.