Replicas of the Berlin Wall toppled around the world on Tuesday as Germans marked the day 20 years ago when the concrete monument to communism was torn down, heralding the end of the Cold War. Poles celebrated the event by toppling a 3-metre-tall Styrofoam replica in Warsaw to cheers and live drum music. Dozens of teens first covered the wall in graffiti, then pushed it over and bounced on the Styrofoam while organizers served juice in champagne glasses.
In London, a wall of ice erected by an Anglo-German artist couple melted in symbolic gesture to suggest that boundaries both physical as well as mental and emotional ones can be overcome.
Tens of thousands of Parisians gathered in the Place de la Concorde in the centre of the French capital for a spectacular light- and-music show depicting the history of those fateful November days.
The French celebrations were somewhat marred by a controversy over President Nicolas Sarkozy's Facebook account of a visit he claims to have made to Berlin on November 9, 1989, for the fall of the wall.
Many reports, including newspaper articles from the time by the daily Le Figaro, appeared to contradict Sarkozy's assertion that he was in Berlin on that night and had hacked off pieces of the wall with a pick-axe.
Rome marked the occasion with a multimedia event on the Spanish Steps, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Italian capital. A chunk of the original wall was displayed to a musical background of the Pink Floyd song, Another Brick in the Wall.
A section of the wall surrounding the German cultural institute in Johannesburg came tumbling down as Germany used the anniversary to try to break down barriers in South Africa.
Germany's ambassador to South Africa Dieter W Haller used a digger to knock down part of the high wall that surrounds the Goethe- Institut in front of an approving audience of around 300.
In Los Angeles, the Berlin Wall - or at least pieces of it - came down as the entertainment capital of the US staged a glitzy arts extravaganza.
Eight pieces of the original wall had been installed in a park opposite the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to commemorate the fall of the barrier.
Some of the sections still had the original graffiti. Others were adorned by local artists and muralists, including Shepard Fairey, who created the famous Hope poster of US President Barack Obama.
"It just gave me the chills when I saw this," Gabriele Hayes, a former resident of East Germany who now lives in Los Angeles, told the local NBC station. "Your whole life comes back in your mind."
A 2.5-ton chunk of the wall was erected in Taiwan to show what officials called the island's determination to pursue freedom and democracy.
Palestinians used the anniversary to pull down an eight-metre-tall section of the barrier erected by Israel in the West Bank. Protesters waved flags and called on the Israeli government to demolish the entire barrier.
In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said those who fought to tear down the Berlin Wall 20 years ago still inspire the present world.
"It is a reminder of the difference people can make for the greater good, whether it is fighting for human rights in 1989 or working in the 21st century to end poverty, feed the hungry and combat climate change," Ban said in a message.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel retraced the steps she took after the fall of the wall 20 years ago.
Addressing throngs of onlookers, the chancellor said the historic events of 1989 were "the result of a long history of repression and the fight against repression," and remembered the many people who suffered under the East German regime.
Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, was joined by dignitaries and civil rights activists, among them former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Poland's former opposition leader and president Lech Walesa.
In a combination of playful artistry and symbolism, central Berlin was divided again by a row of foam-plastic dominoes, 2.5 metres in height and decorated by artists and school pupils from Germany and around the world.
Lech Walesa, the former Polish president, had the privilege of giving the first push to topple them, representing the sequence of events which began in early 1989 in Poland, led to the fall of the wall and ended in the end of Soviet rule in eastern Europe.
