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This combination of photos shows cars crossing the allied Checkpoint Charlie, top, in central Berlin on April 1978, and visitors stand around the same location on Nov. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows a father and son, top, riding their bicycles along a section of the Berlin Wall in Berlin on July 1981 and the same location Nov. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows a section of the Berlin Wall, top, at the district Kreuzberg in Berlin on July 1981 and the same location on Nov. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows a section of the Berlin Wall, top, at Bernauer Strasse where the Berlin Wall divided the city during the Cold War and the same location Nov. 3, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows people leaving the American sector along the Berlin Wall at allied Checkpoint Charlie, top, on April 1978, in central Berlin and visitors crossing the street at the former allied Checkpoint Charlie on Nov. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows cars crossing the allied Checkpoint Charlie, top, in central Berlin on April 1978, and visitors stand around the same location on Nov. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows a section of the Berlin Berlin wall, top, on March 12, 1971, with American sector border sign in Berlin and the same location on Nov. 2, 2019, where the former Berlin Wall divided the city. (AP Photos)

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This combination of photos shows an East German border guard making a fist to some demonstrators, top, on Oct. 7, 1989, who who threw bottles on the eastern side of newly-erected barriers at the allied Checkpoint Charlie crossing point and the same location on Nov. 5, 2019, where people cross the street near where the former allied Checkpoint Charlie was located. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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This combination of photos shows West German students looking across the Berlin Wall, top, on March 8, 1973, at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and the same location on Nov. 3, 2019. (AP Photos)

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This combination of photos shows the Brandenburg gate, top, behind the Berlin Wall from the Reichstag building on March 8, 1973, and the same location on Nov. 4, 2019. (AP Photos)

AP PHOTOS: The Berlin Wall, and the city 30 years later

By Associated Press New Berlin

PUBLISHED 5:41 AM ET Nov. 06, 2019

BERLIN (AP) — The Berlin Wall divided the city for 28 years, but most of it was torn down quickly after East Germany opened its border in 1989 . Today, only a few stretches of the 156.4-kilometer (97.2-mile) cordon around the capitalist exclave of West Berlin remain.

Communist East Germany sealed off the border in Berlin on Aug. 13, 1961, and expanded the Wall into an increasingly elaborate fortification snaking through the city.

The concrete was only the outermost part of a heavily fortified strip that variously included barbed wire, metal fences, guard towers, hidden alarms and dog walkways.

Western visitors to Berlin could peer over into the no-man's-land from viewing platforms at sites such as Potsdamer Platz, a square now rebuilt at the center of a shopping district.

There were a handful of border crossings in the center of the city — among them the famous Checkpoint Charlie, where Soviet and U.S. tanks faced off in October 1961.

The Wall has largely disappeared now and much of the former "death strip" — between the exterior wall that faced the West Berlin side and an interior wall that faced East Berlin — has been built over. Among the few exceptions is a strip of the former border in Bernauer Strasse, now home to a memorial museum.

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Follow AP's full coverage of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at https://www.apnews.com/FalloftheBerlinWall

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