The East Side Gallery is in Berlin, Germany. It occupies a roughly 1.3-kilometre surviving section of the Berlin Wall along Mühlenstraße beside the Spree, in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district.
After the Wall opened in 1989, artists from around the world were invited to paint its previously inaccessible eastern-facing surface. In 1990, 118 artists from 21 countries created more than 100 murals expressing hopes for freedom, peace, and European unity. The gallery officially opened in September 1990 and became one of the best-known remnants of the former border.
Famous images include Dmitri Vrubel’s “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love,” depicting the fraternal kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker, and Birgit Kinder’s “Test the Best,” showing a Trabant breaking through the Wall. The paintings are not all untouched originals: weather, vandalism, and development damaged the works, and many were restored or recreated, notably in 2009. Although the gallery is an outdoor art site, it is also a protected historical monument commemorating Berlin’s division and reunification.