Tunnel 57 was the escape tunnel that carried 57 people from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1964.
The tunnel was dug by a group of West Berlin students and helpers beneath Bernauer Straße. Work began from a disused bakery on the western side, and the route extended under the border toward a building in East Berlin. The diggers worked manually and had to manage unstable soil, limited air, and the constant danger of discovery.
The escape operation took place over two nights in October 1964. Fifty-seven East Berliners used the passage to reach the West, making it one of the most successful mass escapes through a tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall.
Tunnel 57 is sometimes confused with Tunnel 29, another famous passage associated with a large escape in 1962. The numbers refer to the people who escaped through those tunnels, not to official tunnel designations issued by East Germany.