Cold War Berlin
Quick Overview
Description
Time
Choose your start time.
Duration
2, 3, 4, 6 or 8 hours
Meeting Point
The lobby of your hotel
Prices
2 hours
€249
3 hours
€299
4 hours
€389
6 hours
€559
8 hours
€699
Highlights
- Enjoy the convenience of getting picked up directly at your hotel by one of our expert guides and launching straight into your tour.
- Take an in-depth look at life behind the Iron Curtain.
- Find out how the Wall came into being, and what brought it down in 1989.
- See a preserved section of the Berlin Wall, complete with fortifications and part of the so-called death strip.
- Stand at the site of Tunnels 57 and 29 and hear tales of escape attempts – some successful, others thwarted – by East Germans who tried to get over the Wall, or under it.
- Pass through Checkpoint Charlie, a Cold War crossing point where heroic and tragic escape attempts were made.
- Get an idea of what ordinary life was like in West Berlin when it was an “island of freedom in a Communist sea”.
By the end of WWII, Berlin, the capital of defeated Nazi Germany, lay in ruins. As the victorious Allies divided up the spoils of Berlin and Germany among themselves, it became apparent that the faultlines of a new war had been drawn: the Cold War. Opt for a tour format of two, three, four, six or eight hours, and your dedicated guide for the day will collect you from your hotel. From there, you will set off together and take a deep dive into this fascinating chapter of Berlin’s history, when the interests of the two superpowers – the USSR and USA – and two ideologies collided.
In the capable hands of your expert guide, you will travel back in time to the era of a divided Berlin, when friends and families were forced to part ways, possibly for good, some transiting through the Tränenpalast (Palace of Tears), then a border crossing point. As well as a departure point for West, but not East, Berliners, it was also a location where spies would exchange information.
During the unique experience of this top-rated tour, you will see a remaining section of the Berlin Wall, including the so-called death strip that ran alongside it and some of its cruelly ingenious and efficacious border fortifications, from guard towers to tank traps. As you walk along Bernauer Straße, your knowledgeable guide will share stories of ordinary East Germans who embarked on remarkable escape attempts. In the face of GDR Border Troops, who would sooner follow the order to shoot than tolerate “flight from the Republic”, they knew they were risking life and limb.
You will hear of the methods of East Germany’s secret police (the “Stasi”) and the systems, devices and manpower deployed to keep the population under surveillance for 40 years. Your guide will also mention the key members of the GDR leadership and ask where they are today.
Courtesy of your guide, you will come away from your tour with an extraordinary insight into what it meant to live in the GDR, the Eastern Bloc’s most heavily policed state. You will find out what it was like to live both behind the Wall and on the other side of the Wall, in West Berlin, under constant threat of invasion.
At the end of your tour, your Insider guide will be happy to point you in the direction of your next destination or advise you on how you might best spend your time in Berlin.
Example Itinerary
The following list of sites is intended to give you an idea of what you can expect to see on this tour. Please note that our exact route may vary on the day depending on circumstances and your hotel pick-up point.
- Tränenpalast – museum at the former border crossing at Friedrichstraße
- Checkpoint Charlie, where tensions spilled over into direct confrontation
- Nordbahnhof and the “ghost stations” of East Berlin
- The Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Straße
- Section of the Berlin Wall in its original location
- The “death strip” between the two main barriers of the Wall
- Site of escape tunnels
- Chapel of Reconciliation in the former border strip
- An original East German watchtower
- Alexanderplatz – hub of daily life and scene of a decisive anti-government protest in 1989
- Fernsehturm (TV Tower) – intended as a symbol of socialist achievement
- East Side Gallery – a visual narrative of the impact of the Cold War
- Hohenschönhausen Memorial – site of Soviet NKVD camp and Stasi Prison
Insider Reviews
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