Berlin will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Sunday 9 November, an iconic momentof the 20th century that saw a divided city finally united, and signalled the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

Built in 1961 during the height of the cold war, the wall cut a city in half and represented an ideological divide between the communist eastern bloc and the democratic west.

After widespread protests in East Germany calling for democratic government, concessions were made. Just before seven p.m. on November 9, 1989, GDR Politburo member Gunter Schabowski announced that applications could now be made for permits to travel to western countries, and that people would be allowed to travel through the checkpoints from East to West Germany. Asked when this would come into effect, he hesitated before replying, "immediately".

When the news spread, huge crowds gathered at the Berlin Wall's gates demanding to be let through. There was little the East German state could do now. The Wall was breached as guards let Germans reunite.

In the archive footage released here, you can see the people flooding to clamber across the wall, before with axes and hammers start to take the concrete structure apart. The euphoria of the fall of the wall continues on into the following day, when thousands of people congest the streets driving across the border from East to West Germany.

Berlin Wall 25th Anniversary