The story of this place
Spanning the Havel between Potsdam and West Berlin, the Glienicke Bridge marked the Cold War frontier and became the theatre for its most cinematic ritual: the exchange of captured spies. On 10 February 1962, American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, shot down over the USSR, was swapped here for Soviet spymaster Rudolf Abel — the episode dramatised in Spielberg's 'Bridge of Spies'. Two further swaps followed, most famously the release of dissident Anatoly Sharansky in 1986, who zig-zagged across the line to defy his captors. For decades the bridge was painted two shades of green, one per side, meeting at the exact border in the middle.