Wall Museum - Checkpoint Charlie — Attraction in Berlin

A tip: don't pay for the audio guide. There is sooooo much reading to do here that you can't both listen and read at the same time.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a logical order to the rooms or exhibits and you have to be choosy about what you read, because it gets confusing because it seems to jump between years and decades and individuals and issues and events. I think literally every question that could ever be asked about the Wall, the check points, life in East Berlin, the smugglers, the politics, geography and anything else about the Cold War era is answered, somewhere, in this museum.

The artifacts are really amazing. I would have rated higher if there was a logical order to the rooms and markers on the walls or floors to tell you where to go next. Even if things were moved around to represent a different decade per floor, or per side of a floor, it would make more sense and be more cohesive. I felt overwhelmed with all the things to read, and when I finished one Board and started the next and then the next, I was jumping back and forth in time.

It is interesting though, and in some spots, very moving. I found the two rooms dedicated to Syria and Ukraine very very moving and emotional. Germany should be so proud of how they have handled and helped in these crises. The human rights exhibits were wonderful.

I love the view from the room with all the windows, of the check point and building across the street and square with the panorama. It felt odd though that there was such propaganda towards Ronald Reagan in one of the rooms, especially given the rooms for human rights and non-violence on either side of the "Reagan room", and his record of treatment of American prisoners and the LGBTQ community during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s... anyway.

You could spend hours and hours here. It's worth the ticket, but not the ticket plus the...

For me it's overpriced, I had like a 2€ discount for be a student, but still, it's overpriced, I wanted the audio guide but it was 5€ extra, then the guy saw my camera and told me that I had to pay 5€ to take photos, so I chose the photos instead of the audio guide. Once I was in the museum I saw the first part and upstairs some random guy walked directly to me and showed me a paper which said he was asking for money so his "association" could build an institution for deaf people (also he was acting like a deaf), and naively I have him 5€, I never do that, but was the way he approached to me that I did it automatically. The he sinically pointed in his piece of paper that the minimum was 20€! Then I said I didn't had that and asked for my 5€ and he ran. All of this inside the already expensive museum! Now, talking specifically about the museum, it has a lot of info, I think they could reduce it to the very important. Then you get lost there, there are signs where you suppose to go, but they aren't clear. The bathrooms are dirty. And again, there's a lot of info, more that the objects that you can find. They let in lots of people so for moments it is very crowd. For me it didn't worth it, not even if it is cheap or free; there are lots of great museums in Berlin, much more interesting, cool, and with reasonable prices, where you can actually find the history that contains Checkpoint Charlie "Museum". If you go there, I just recommend to take a pic to the Checkpoint Charlie and to enter to the museum's shop, they...

This is one of the most fascinating periods of history in most of our lifetimes, and this museum was fantastic when we first visited in the mid-90s with incredible artifacts and stories told. Unfortunately, it's barely changed in the twenty years following, and it shows :( Most of the wall exhibits have not been refreshed at all, and they are either woefully outdated (stories about people that abruptly end in in the 90s, a photo of an 'upcoming' Space Shuttle launch) or are in some cases worn to the point that the text can no longer be read. It feels like they're now mostly cashing in on their location and past glory.

Given the number of people visiting, the entrance price and the size of the gift store, yet the small number of staff on hand, they must be making plenty of money. It is such a shame that they don't seem to have invested even a fraction of that on refreshing and updating the exhibits.

On the plus side, they have a great view of the old border control area beyond Checkpoint Charlie, which is a wonderful perspective of how the reunification has utterly changed this area recent years. Make sure you go to the far end of the building -- some of my family missed this area altogether.

I'd recommend you give this one a miss and try the Stasi museum or the GDR museum, both of which capture life in the old East Germany far more profoundly and with...