When did the Berlin Wall fall?

The traditional date marking the fall of the Berlin Wall is Nov. 9, 1989. On this day, the government of East Germany allowed people to cross freely into West Berlin. The government removed some portions of the wall to create more crossings.

Many people began to chip away at the wall on that Nov. 9, but the large majority of the wall remained intact for several months. In the summer of 1990, the German government began to dismantle the remaining wall, a process that took nearly two years to reconnect the city of Berlin and another two years to remove the barriers between West Berlin and the former East Germany. Several sections of the Berlin Wall still exist in Berlin, as of 2014.