The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in one of the busiest moments in the history of modern, urban architecture as innumerable buildings and open spaces became available for development throughout the former Communist east. One of the most famous of these spaces in Berlin is the East Side Gallery, a strip of the original wall that has been left as a monument to the division of the city where artists began painting a mural in the 1990s.

The expanse of the Spree, the liveliness of the water and the traffic of the ships offer important potential for a rich and multi-faceted downtown Berlin experience. The prominence of the water in the area surrounding the East Side Gallery is an important measure in creating quality city development.

Nowhere was this truer than in Berlin itself, which suddenly offered, in addition to vast opportunities for renovation and new construction in the eastern part of the city, the artistic and historical conundrum of how to approach the new empty space cutting through the city where the wall and the no mans land that ran alongside it had once stood.

It makes this strip of the Sprees bank unique and momentous for both tourists and Berliners.