Hotels near Berlin Wall Memorial

The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse is the only place where the full depth of the border fortifications survives: outer wall, death strip, patrol road, lamps and a watchtower, preserved across a 1.4-kilometre stretch. Bernauer Strasse was where the buildings themselves formed the border in 1961, with people jumping from upper windows into the West before the facades were bricked up. The visitor centre and documentation centre are both free.

This is the serious Wall site, as distinct from the East Side Gallery, which is a 1.3-kilometre painted section of the inner wall along the Spree and is worth seeing as public art rather than as history. The memorial's observation tower gives the only aerial view of an intact section of death strip. Allow two hours. The outdoor grounds are open daily and the indoor centres close on Mondays.

Pro Tip: Start at Nordbahnhof station and read the exhibition inside it before going up to the street. It was a ghost station, sealed and patrolled beneath East Berlin while Western trains passed through without stopping, and the panels down there set up everything above ground.