The record
The most visited Cold War address in Berlin, where nothing original survives in place — the genuine guardhouse is seven kilometres away.
The Allied crossing point between the American and Soviet sectors, and the place where American and Soviet tanks faced each other across the line in October 1961. Nothing original survives on the site itself: the guardhouse now standing is a replica, and the last genuine one is in the Allied Museum on Clayallee, which this catalogue records separately. The Berlin Wall Foundation is developing an education centre here.
The record is kept precisely because the site is empty — it is the clearest case in the catalogue of a place whose fame and whose surviving fabric have nothing to do with each other. That is a claim about the crossing point, not about the street: a small piece of original wall and an original border post are displayed about forty metres south, in front of the Mauermuseum on Friedrichstraße, and they are original. They were brought there. The distinction this record is making is between fabric that is where it was and fabric that has been put where the visitors are, and Friedrichstraße shows both within a minute's walk.
How did it get here?
No original fabric in place. The authentic guardhouse was removed to the Allied Museum.
Sources
Sites — Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Foundation) ↗
The Foundation's own listing of the sites it runs and documents, with addresses and what survives at each.
Institutional sourceSource accessed 2026-09-17
Berlin Wall: where it still stands — Berlin.de ↗
The checkpoint building is a replica, and a small piece of original wall and an original border post are displayed in front of the Mauermuseum nearby.
General referenceSource accessed 2026-09-17
No photograph of this one has been published. If you have taken one, or know when it arrived or who gave it, we would like to hear. Contribute to this record