There was cheering on the streets and across the world when theBerlin Wall came down on the night of November 9th in 1989. Now, nearly 20 years later, Berliners can cheer the wall going up as restored art on a preserved section of the wall is opened to the public.
The wall was built in 1961 to stop East Berliners escaping Communism by fleeing to the West and became the symbol of the Communist dictatorship.
Berliners were overjoyed to tear down the city's most detested symbol 20 years ago but now they're trying to restore the three-quarter-mile long East Side gallery - a dilapidated section of wall that is covered with 106 different paintings and graffiti and that has become a major tourist attraction.
The wall has been battered by pollution, weather and time, turning famous images into a sad sight - with long cracks in the concrete and big chunks of paint flaking off.
Artist Gerhard Kriedner is repairing that damge stroke by stroke as he applies acrylic paint with a small brush on a 14-yard stretch of the Berlin Wall, recreating the mural he first painted months after the Berlin Wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989.
Kriedner and 90 artists from around the world have gathered to repaint their original creations on the concrete slabs, bringing new life to images that have been eroded by the elements over the last two decades, on the longest remaining length of the wall that once split Germany's capital.
Of the initial group of artists, only five declined to participate in the renovation project.
Only after the wall's collapse did a group of Berlin artists decide to decorate the stretch - the first joint art project of the formerly divided city.
Ebru TV