Berlin (city-state)
East Side Gallery
How to visit Berlin's East Side Gallery: where the 1.3km mural stretch starts, the paintings to find, when to go to dodge the crowds at the famous kiss, and whether it's worth the trip out to Friedrichshain.
Where
Berlin, Germany
Opening hours
Open 24 hours, every day. The gallery is a free-standing painted wall along a public riverside pavement, so there is no gate, no closing time and no ticket desk — only the daylight matters for seeing the murals.
Tickets
Free. There is no admission charge of any kind; the wall sits on an open public street. The only thing you might pay for is a guided Berlin Wall walking tour that includes it, which typically runs about €15–€20 (around £13–£17) per person.
Time needed
About 45 minutes to an hour to walk the full 1,316 metres and stop at the best-known panels. Add 20–30 minutes if you want photos without other people in them or a drink at the riverside bars by the Oberbaumbrücke.
In short
Visiting East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery is the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall — a 1,316-metre run of the original concrete along Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain, painted by 118 artists in 1990 and now an open-air monument. It is free and never closes: there are no tickets, no gate and no opening hours, because it lines a public pavement beside the Spree. Walk it end to end in about 45 minutes to an hour, start from the Ostbahnhof end so you finish at the Oberbaumbrücke, and go early if you want the famous Brezhnev–Honecker kiss to yourself.
What it is, and how to walk it
The East Side Gallery is the longest piece of the Berlin Wall still standing — a 1,316-metre run of the original concrete along Mühlenstraße in Friedrichshain, painted by 118 artists in 1990 once the border fell. It is free, ungated and open around the clock: there is no ticket desk and no closing time because it lines a public pavement beside the Spree, so the only thing that limits you is daylight.
Start from the Ostbahnhof end and walk south toward the Oberbaumbrücke, not the other way round — that way you pass the two best-known panels early and finish at the river bars rather than doubling back. Allow about 45 minutes to an hour for the full length at a stop-and-photograph pace. The murals were repainted by the original artists in 2009 after twenty years of weathering and graffiti, so what you see is a faithful restoration rather than the flaking 1990 paint.
The murals to find, when to go, and is it worth it?
Two paintings draw every camera: Dmitri Vrubel’s “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love” — the socialist fraternal kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker — and Birgit Kinder’s “Test the Best”, the Trabant bursting through the wall. Both sit toward the Ostbahnhof end, which is the other reason to start there. Get to them before about 10am or in the early evening: by midday the tour groups bunch up at the kiss panel and you’ll be waiting for a clean shot.
It is the most complete stretch of Wall left in the city and it costs nothing, which makes it an easy yes — but treat it as a 45-minute open-air walk, not a half-day. Pair it with a crossing of the Oberbaumbrücke into Kreuzberg, or with the documentation centre at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße on another day, which tells the human story the murals don’t. Walk it, take the two photos everyone takes, and move on to a meal in Friedrichshain rather than forcing it to fill an afternoon.
Planning the rest of your trip? See the Berlin city guide.
