(dpa) – Over a quarter century since its fall, visitors still can’t get enough of the Berlin Wall and its dread. The German capital has just got a new tourist attraction – a commercial museum presenting a multi-media history of the infamous Cold War barrier.
The Wall Museum East Side Gallery features 13 rooms where visitors are informed through installations, interviews and films about the division of Germany and the city of Berlin.
«The museum tells how the Wall changed peoples’ lives,» the management explains. Outside the museum is the East Side Gallery, one of the only long sections of the original grey wall still standing, now covered with colourful paintings.
Work on the concrete structure, which partly ran down the middle of streets, began in 1961. The wall only parted for the general public after a popular uprising against the East German state in November 1989.
The museum provides behind-the-scenes glimpses into the world political situation then, but also a close-up perspective of how the division of Berlin affected people as well as the tragedy of failed escape attempts.
On a balcony overlooking the Spree River, visitors learn how the cold river drowned children who tried to swim across. The river formed part of the boundary between the East and West sections of the city.
The Wall Museum East Side Gallery becomes the third such attraction devoted especially to the Berlin Wall.
At Bernauer Strasse there is a memorial site run by the city government with a section of the original wall still standing, while there is a commercially operated wall museum at Checkpoint Charlie.
Commercial museums are popular with tourists in Berlin because their exhibitions are more exciting than at the austere official museums and because they use English throughout.
