Street Art & Subculture
The East Side Gallery, Kreuzberg squats, graffiti, the anarchist scene and the do-it-yourself subcultures that define the city’s edge.
Part of Berlin
13 moments in this segment.
- — The Ampelmännchen. The jaunty hatted pedestrian-light figure of the East — an Ostalgie icon that survived reunification.
- — Teufelsberg. The Cold War listening-station on a rubble mountain — now a graffiti-covered ruin and outdoor art space.
- — The Kreuzberg squats. The anarchist, Turkish and punk heart of West Berlin — squatted tenements and the city's radical edge.
- — May Day in Kreuzberg. The annual May 1 ritual of riots-turned-street-festival — politics, sound systems and tear gas.
- — The radical underground. The squats, the autonomists, and the long anti-gentrification battles of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.
- — Kunsthaus Tacheles. A bombed Mitte department store turned anarchic artists' squat and gallery — a 1990s post-Wall legend.
- — My God, Help Me to Survive. Dmitri Vrubel's East Side Gallery mural of Brezhnev kissing Honecker — the "fraternal kiss".
- — The East Side Gallery. The longest surviving stretch of the Wall, painted by 100+ artists in 1990 — the world's longest open-air gallery.
- — Mauerpark. The old death strip turned Sunday people's park — karaoke, flea-market, and a city at play on the former border.
- — YAAM and the riverbanks. The Afro-Caribbean beach-bar culture of the Spree banks — sound systems, sand, and reclaimed industrial space.
- — Haus Schwarzenberg. The last un-renovated courtyard off Hackescher Markt — a riot of paste-ups, stencils and street art in gleaming Mitte.
- — Graffiti capital of Europe. Berlin's endless trains, walls and shutters — one of the densest, most storied graffiti landscapes in the world.
- — BLU's murals. The Italian street artist's monumental Kreuzberg murals — later painted over by the artist himself in protest at gentrification.
