BERLIN (AP) — Berlin’s appearance has changed enormously since the fall on Nov. 9, 1989 of the Berlin Wall, which for nearly three decades divided the communist east from the city’s west — a capitalist enclave deep inside East Germany.

East Germany disappeared less than a year later when the country was reunited, and much of the wall also was demolished quickly — though a few sections still remain at their original sites.

This photo gallery compares 17 iconic images of the Berlin Wall when it stood with the same locations in the reunified German capital today.

The images include the building of the wall in 1961, people waving to relatives across the divide, children playing beside the wall, U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon looking into East Germany across the barrier, border checkpoints and people walking through a hole in the wall created by East German border guards two days after the frontier was opened.

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