The Berlin Wall came down 35 years ago today. Fragments of the famous border still remain today.

Communist East Germany closed its border in Berlin on Aug. 13, 1961, when it erected a wall that eventually turned into an increasingly elaborate fortification snaking through the city and around capitalist West Berlin.

The heavily fortified border —the Berlin Wall— plugged the last gap between East and West.

On Nov. 9, 1989, the border was opened, and the Berlin Wall ceremoniously came down as the world watched. It marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Communist dictatorship in East Germany, paving the way for German reunification in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.