Route in Berlin
The Berlin Wall Trail is a self-guided walking route following the path of the former Wall through the city. Free. Start at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse (the main memorial site), walk south through Mitte to Checkpoint Charlie, continue to the Topography of Terror (free museum on the former Gestapo site), and finish at the East Side Gallery on the Spree. The full route is about 10 kilometers and covers the Cold War history of Berlin through the places where it actually happened. Budget travelers walk it in one day and get a deeper understanding of the divided city than any bus tour could provide.
The route
Each stop is free to stand in front of, whatever the tour costs.
The Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse is the central memorial site of German division, with a preserved section of the Wall, the death strip, a watchtower, and an open-air exhibition documenting escape attempts and the lives disrupted by the border. Free.
Checkpoint Charlie was the most famous crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. The guardhouse replica and the open-air exhibition boards on Friedrichstrasse are free to see.
The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall, 1.3 kilometers of concrete covered in over 100 murals painted by artists from around the world in 1990. Free, open-air, and always accessible.
Everything else Berlin costs.
Berlin