Berlin Wall Trail

The Berlin Wall Trail is Berlin's most famous cycling tour: 160 kilometers on the former border strip, divided into 14 stages, all starting and ending at train stations. Over 40 information stations along the way tell the story of the division. It is not a fully developed cycle path; the surface alternates between asphalt, cobblestones, and forest floor.

The Berlin Wall Trail: 160 Kilometers on the Old Border Strip

The Berlin Wall Trail follows the course of the Wall around West Berlin for 160 kilometers. Around 50 kilometers of it are inner-city, while the remaining 110 kilometers lead through the surrounding area. The Senate Department has divided the route into 14 stages, all of which begin and end near train or subway stations. Over 40 information stations and more than 100 overview maps are available along the way, and a double row of cobblestones in the road surface additionally marks the former course of the border.

However, the Wall Trail is not a fully developed cycle path. The surface alternates between asphalt, forest floor, cobblestones, and dirt track; at individual points, you have to dismount and push for a short distance. The route dates back to a marking by the ADFC in 1990 and a proposal by the BUND in 1991. The House of Representatives approved it in 2001, and it was expanded between 2002 and 2006.

Memorial Sites, Cherry Trees, and a Border Tower

The Berlin Wall Memorial is located on Bernauer Straße, featuring a 350-meter-long outdoor exhibition on one hectare, embedded in a 1.3-kilometer-long memorial path. Two six-meter-high steel walls enclose an 80-meter-long section of the border strip there. The Chapel of Reconciliation stands on the site where the GDR blew up a church in 1985. Admission is free. The memorial steles for those who died at the Wall are 4.20 meters high, exactly as high as the Wall itself was.

Further south, the TV Asahi Cherry Blossom Avenue stretches for over one and a half kilometers along the Teltow Canal, featuring over 1000 trees from a Japanese donation campaign in 1990. The East Side Gallery, approximately 1.3 kilometers long, is the longest preserved section of the Wall, painted in 1990 by 118 artists from 21 countries. To the north, the Nieder Neuendorf Border Tower from 1987 can be climbed. Additionally, there are curiosities like the Eiskeller, a West Berlin exclave that was only accessible via an 800-meter-long corridor.