If you've ever thought, 'London's got a bit of everything, really' here's another thing to add credence to that idea; you can see a genuine slice of the Berlin Wall while you're pottering about in London.
Outside the Imperial War Museum
There's a segment of the wall in the Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, outside the Imperial War Museum.
The section, made of concrete and steel, was taken from the Leuschnerdamm in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. It was acquired by the Imperial War Museum in 1991, two years after the wall fell.
It is painted with graffiti, including a grotesque, distorted face in outline, with its mouth open. Over the red mouth are the words 'Change your life.'
The graffiti is attributed to the artist 'Indiano'.
Outside the former US Embassy in London
There's a second fragment of the Berlin Wall near the bronze Ronal Reagan statue outside the former US Embassy in Grosvenor Square in Mayfair.
This remnant of the wall, smooth and graffiti-free, is recorded as coming from the 'east side'.
It's mounted in a kind of window on a bronze plaque, which commemorates the role Reagan played in the coming down of the wall.
The rather verbose plaque also features quotes from President Reagan – including the famous line from his 1987 Brandenburg Gate speech, "Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
About the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided the city of Berlin from 1961 to 1989; it came to symbolise the Iron Curtain that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
Despite GDR propaganda, the wall was actually built to keep East Germans in and not West Germans out; one estimate suggests that between September 1945 and December 1965, East Germany lost more than 2 million citizens.
192 people are known to have died in attempts to cross either the Wall or the frontier obstacles; there's a chance that the actual figure is higher.
You can read a thorough history of the wall on the Imperial War Museum website.
Other Berlin Wall Segments in London
There are also sections of the Berlin War in the collections at the National Army Museum.
A further segment stands near the sports hall at The German School London in Petersham, Richmond.
With thanks to London Remembers for alerting us to the Reagan statue's fragment.
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