The record
The only place where the border strip survives in depth — wall, ground, obstacles and tower positions in one preserved cross-section.
About 1.4 km of memorial grounds along Bernauer Straße, of which roughly 60 m is preserved as a complete cross-section of the border: the wall itself, the raked ground behind it, the obstacles and the positions of the towers. Nowhere else survives in that depth. Bernauer Straße is where the buildings stood on the eastern side and the pavement on the western, so people jumped from windows in August 1961 while the doors below were bricked up — which is why this street, of the 43 km that cut through the city, is the one that was argued for and kept.
How did it get here?
Original position. Almost nothing in Berlin survives because anyone decided to keep it: demolition ran through 1990 and was close to total, and the preserved sections are the ones fought for afterwards.
Sources & verification
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.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
The Berlin Wall — Stiftung Berliner Mauer ↗
The border ran 155 km around West Berlin, of which roughly 43 km cut through the city.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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