Artists began painting the East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall in 1990.
The project started after the wall opened in November 1989 and was created on a long surviving section near the River Spree. More than 100 artists from around the world contributed murals, making the site a visual record of political change and the end of Berlin’s division.
The paintings were made during the transitional period before German reunification formally took effect on 3 October 1990. That timing gives the gallery a special place in the history of the wall: it transformed a border structure into a symbol of freedom while the political future of Germany was still being negotiated.
The gallery is sometimes mistakenly dated to 1989 because the wall opened that year. The artwork itself began in 1990, after the opening and during the final year of the wall’s existence as a political boundary.