East Side Gallery

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Dmitri Vrubel's "Fraternal Kiss"

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Many people visit the former inner-German border at the so-called East Side Gallery in Berlin.

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Picture of a Trabant (East German car) breaking through a wall by Birgit Kindler.

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The East Side Wall is a 1.3 kilometer long painted section of the former Berlin Wall along the Spree River.

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Passers-by at the East Side Gallery in Berlin

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With over one hundred original wall paintings, the East Side Gallery is the longest open-air gallery in the world.

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The East Side Gallery has to be restored regularly.

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© Antje Kraschinski/BerlinOnline

The East-Side Gallery in Berlin, seen from a boat.

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In 2006, a 40-meter-long section of the gallery had to give way to provide access from the Spree to a new event location at Ostbahnhof.

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In 2008, the large-scale work of art was in such poor condition that it had to be renovated from the ground up.

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The refurbishment required the paintings, which had been created by international artists in 1990, to be taken down and reapplied when they were finished.

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For the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 2009, artists from all over the world reapplied their earlier paintings from 1990.

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91 of the original 106 works were reapplied to the East Side Gallery.

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The famous wall painting of the Socialist fraternal kiss between Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev by artist Dimitrij Vrubel before the second renovation ...

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... and after.

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A barrier is now to be erected in front of the remains of the Berlin Wall to protect the East Side Gallery.