The New Old Berlin Wall

Who would've thought, 19 years ago, that anyone would want to restore the concrete symbol of the Cold War, the barrier that divided East Berlin from its West part...

The Berlin Wall fell down in 1989 - the event was considered to be the fall of the communist regime in Eastern Europe and a symbol of Germany's unification. On Wednesday, construction works began on the longest stretch of the Wall, damaged by vandals and by tourists, who treated chips of the Wall as a souvenir from their trip to Berlin. In 1990 the city's authorities encouraged more than 100 graffiti artists to cover 1.3 km of the Wall (the so-called East Side Gallery) with their work. It became one of the most popular tourist attraction.

And now the time has finally come for the murals, gnawed by the tooth of time, to be restored. The money needed for the project was given by the European Union, as well as state lottery and federal/local funds. The cost of the restoration works is about 2.2 million euros. The project presumes removing the concrete and replacing it with high-quality materials. The original artworks, though removed for the restoration, will be repainted by the same artists - hopefully on November 9, 2009, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the end, 821 wall segments as well as 105 artworks should be restored. City culture official Andre Schmitz stated that restoring the East Side Gallery is one of Berlin's ways of remembering the wall and paying tribute to its victims.