I own a 1965 Baedeker guide to Berlin. Like all Baedekers it's superbly detailed, a model of pragmatic advice and scrupulous information. It's also a historical artefact as it was published just four years after the Berlin Wall went up. Here, in precise, neutral commentary, is all you need to know – as a tourist in Berlin – about the Wall and its baleful presence in the city. The four military zones are illustrated with neat diagrams – as if depicting different rooms and floors of a museum – and the beautiful multicoloured fold-out maps of the city's various districts (Kreuzberg, Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, etc) are all traversed by a cross-hatched, dark grey line: Die Mauer – the Wall. According to this edition of Baedeker, the Wall seems as permanent a feature of the city's topography as Berlin's river, the Spree.
