The Berlin Wall. Living in a Divided World

The Castellana 214 Hall at the Canal Foundation will be hosting the first large-scale travelling exhibition on the Berlin Wall. More than 300 original objects, videos, and real-life testimonies from those who lived on both sides of the wall for almost three decades, from 1961 to 1989, will be on display.

The exhibition explores the different experiences, constituting  a human testimony of the reality that this symbol represented: a global conflict between capitalism and socialism that brought the world to the brink of nuclear destruction. The exhibition will explore the escalation of this conflict and how the people of Berlin came to take sides, fight, escape, adjust, and ultimately overcome the Cold War divisions.

This major project is made up of more than 300 original objects, including 20 metres of the actual wall, along with materials that depict its evolution over time, such as the barbed wire laid in the early stages of the division. Everyday items that citizens of Berlin ingeniously re-purposed for smuggling, provision of basic goods and communication between civilians on both sides will be on display, as well as objects related to the fall of the Wall and the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, such as the original tools used by citizens on 9 November 1989 to demolish the Wall. 

This exhibition project has been developed by Musealia and the Berlin Wall Foundation. Madrid, twinned with Berlin since 4 November 1988, will be the first stop on a seven-year tour that will travel to diverse cities worldwide.