This is Berlin at its most haunting, captured on camera in a series of fascinating images by British photographer Allan Hailstone, who visited the east and west sides between 1959 and 1966.

In pictures: East Berlin before the fall of the Wall 11/10/2021 November 10, 2021. Photographer Günter Steffen captured the final years of East Berlin under the GDR.

Paul Schutzer—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images An East German teen hides in tall grass, far left, awaiting a chance to jump over the Berlin Wall in October 1961.

Berlin's "anti-fascist protection barrier" was installed by East Germany's Soviet-backed left-wing government in the summer of 1961, ostensibly to prevent Western spies from entering East Berlin.

25 years before it came down 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, photographer Arwed Messmer found photos taken by East German patrol agents during 1965 and 1966 looking toward the West.

The Berlin Wall came tumbling down on November 9, 1989, reuniting East and West Germany, and foreshadowing the fall of the Soviet Union. It stood for 28 years to separate the two sides of Berlin ...

East Side Gallery is ranked #6 out of 20 things to do in Berlin. See pictures and our review of East Side Gallery.

The Communist regime was prepared for everything “except candles and prayers.” East Germany’s peaceful 1989 revolution showed that societies that don’t reform, die.

The Berlin Wall — the infamous landmark of separated Europe — fell Nov. 9, 1989 after dividing Communist East Berlin from capitalist West Berlin for more than 28 years.