Twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: how the wall came down

Twenty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Today, just a small sector of the 155-km symbol of a divided Europe remains to remind the world of the Cold War.

On November 9, 1989, the East German government opened the Berlin Wall, which began as a barbed-wire barrier in August 1961. Since then, the 155-km (96-mile) wall has been dismantled, and now only a small part of the wall remains standing as a monument to the Cold War.