There is a painted portion of the Berlin Wall for all to enjoy, alongside the River Spree in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg area of Berlin.

The body responsible for this is the East Side Gallery, founded following the successful merger of the two German artists’ associations VBK and BBK, from east and west.  It consists of over 100 paintings by artists from all over the world, painted in 1990 on the east side of the Berlin Wall. Due to vandalism and tagging by visitors, the wall underwent major renovation in 2009.  But the mistreatment of the wall continued and further renovation work was announced in late 2015.  My visit in May 2017 demonstrated that much of this work had been carried out, and the clean works were then protected behind a wire fence.

You can see an example of just one of the murals below (one that hadn’t been all that seriously damaged in fact), showing the difference in cleanliness between my 2015 and 2017 visits.

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And I popped back to the gallery again in 2022, so here is a more recent view, with the protective fencing now gone:

For more views of this section of wall back in 2015, click here

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Copyright Debbie Smyth, 1 June 2017, updated September 2023

Posted as part of Past meets present