Wall Museum

Founded in 1962, a year after the Berlin Wall went up, the Wall Museum has documented escapes from East Berlin from a building beside Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point between East and West. On signs it appears as Mauermuseum – Haus am Checkpoint Charlie. Its founder, the human rights activist Rainer Hildebrandt, gathered testimony from people who had fled and used the museum to publicise their stories while the Wall still stood.

The core of the collection is the improvised means people used to get across, among them cars fitted with concealed compartments, alongside photographs, documents and personal accounts of successful and failed attempts. Other rooms cover the history of the Wall and the division of Germany, as well as nonviolent struggles for freedom and human rights in other countries.

The displays are dense and text-heavy, so the museum best suits visitors who want detailed personal stories of the divided city. It draws around 870,000 visitors a year.