The Berlin Wall's designated border crossings

Map of 7 locations in Berlin, Germany

From 1961 to 1989, anyone crossing between the two halves of Berlin, or between West Berlin and the rest of West Germany, had to use one of a fixed set of controlled crossings. Some were streets, some bridges, one an autobahn. Each carried different traffic and left different traces. The Allies used a NATO-alphabet naming scheme that the GDR's own "Grenzübergangsstelle" never matched, and that gap between the two names tells you how far apart the two sides' view of the border was.

Places in this collection

  • Checkpoint Bravo — This is where the Berlin-Helmstedt autobahn entered West Berlin at Dreilinden. It was the second of the three Allied checkpoints, after Alp…
  • Oberbaumbrücke — This double-deck bridge over the Spree links Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, two boroughs the Wall kept apart, and the Berlin Wall Foundation…
  • Sonnenallee — The Berlin Wall Foundation documents the Sonnenallee crossing and has put up an information panel at the site as part of Berlin's History M…
  • Invalidenstraße — The Invalidenstraße crossing connected Wedding in the West with Mitte in the East, and the Berlin Wall Foundation lists it among the city's…
  • Heinrich-Heine-Straße — This was one of the Wall's largest checkpoints, and much of the divided city's goods and mail passed through it. The street took the poet's…
  • Bornholmer Straße — The crossing sat at the eastern end of the Bösebrücke, and on the evening of 9 November 1989 it was the first point on the Berlin Wall to o…
  • Checkpoint Charlie — The Allied name followed the NATO alphabet: Alpha at Helmstedt-Marienborn on the inner-German border, Bravo at Dreilinden, Charlie here at…

Related collections