East Side Gallery

The Berlin Wall, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), was a barrier that divided Germany from 1961 to 1989. During the post-World War II period, the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

In the 1980s, graffiting on the wall became popular for artists from all over the world, the Berlin Wall turned into the largest canvas in the world.  The East Side Gallery consists of 105 paintings by artists throughout the world, French artist, Thierry Noir, who is claimed to be the first street artist to paint the Berlin Wall while many of the artworks were not claimed by artists and remain anonymous.

Ohne Titel by Thierry Noir

The fall of the Berlin Wall began the evening of 9 November 1989, more than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.”

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the graffiti artists marched straight into East Germany, all of the areas that the military had occupied became a new playground for the Western artists and a new world for the Eastern artists who joined them, from then, the development of the Berlin street art has started and it has also become a place where tourists would go and admire the artwork.

Berlin street art scene