Berlin - The Berlin Wall may have long since been demolished, but visitors are flocking to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum - just yards from the spot where Russian and American tanks angrily squared up to one another at the height of the Cold War. The museum, depicting some of the more bizarre escapes made during the Wall's 29-year-old history, and the grim methods used by the East German regime to stop its citizens fleeing the communist state, has been crowded with visitors over the Easter weekend.

At the junction in the central Kreuzberg district where Kochstrasse morphs into the Friedrichstasse a white hut plays the role of the old American control point, with two men in mock uniforms satisfying tourists' requests for photographs.

Where soldiers from the western powers used to stare down grim-faced ranks of East German border guards, there are today bus- loads of tourists toting cameras at the old crossing point, marking the city's post-war American and Soviet zones.

No longer are there watchtowers. Also missing are the zig-zag barricades designed to foil highspeed escapes and the corregated metal roof that once spanned the roadway like an overblown highway toll booth in the 1980s.

Instead, office and apartment blocks have mushroomed, cloaking the 1960s spy world atmosphere created in John Le Carre's Berlin espionage thrillers into a corporate, diplomatic and retail zone.

Still poigniant is the monument to 18-year-old Peter Fechter, shot while seeking to scale the wall not far from the Springer Publishing House on August 17, 1962. As the wounded teenager lay bleeding at the foot of the barrier, his desperate cries of "Help me! Help me" could be heard by West Berlin police, who risked their lives throwing him first aid packets over the barricades as Fechter took 50 minutes to die.

Founded in 1963 by the late Rainer Hildebrandt, who died five years ago, the Museum offers an exhaustive history of East Bloc escape attempts.

Tourists wander through the various floors of the exhibition, studying the improvised chair lift in which a family of three managed to whisk over the wall in 1965, a rust-coloured Opel with armor-plating and concrete-filled doors which safely brought five people to the West in 1961, or photos of the wooden wagon used to remove dirt from a 145-metre-long tunnel through which 57 refugees fled in 1964.

"It seems incredible a city the size of Berlin should have been divided by a wall, for the best part of 30 years," sighs Melanie Gibson, 17, a high school student from Massachusetts, USA, after a 30-minute visit to the Museum.

"A pity there's so little evidence of the wall anymore. I'm surprised segments were not kept near Checkpoint Charlie as a symbol of man's inhumanity to man," she says.

Nagai Kazuyoshi, 37, a fashion designer from Tokyo on a two-week trip to Germany, agrees. "After German reunification l could perhaps understand why Berliners wanted to get rid of all traces of the barrier.

"It was a monstrous thing, but then perhaps that's a reason why parts of it should have been retained to remind people of a dark chapter in their history," she said.

Today, Berlin Wall fragments are be found in Washington, Honolulu, Costa Rica and Tokyo but in Berlin you have to search hard to find traces of the "anti-fascist barrier" as it was called by the communists.

Bernauerstrasse in Berlin, is one place where a section of the Wall is preserved as an official memorial site, complete with border fortifications, dog-runs and the so-called "death strip." But it is not in a central part of the city, and often gets overlooked by foreign tourists.

In recent years Berlin officials have conceded it was a mistake immediately dismantling the whole of the Wall following the city's reunification.

However, soon a start is to be made on restoring a 1.3 kilometre stretch of wall known as the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain, in what formerly was communist East Berlin. Early in 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall was breached by jubilant East Germans, this part of the wall was painted by 118 international artists.

But down the years the wall pictures eroded and turned shabby, due to pollution, vandalism and the effects of the weather.

For years, Berlin-based artist Kani Alavi canvassed to rescue the wall art works. Franz Schulz, a Green Party member who is mayor Berlin's Friedrichshain district where the Gallery is located has been supportive, but has claimed there's uncertainty over who actually owns the site.

The wall restoration is being funded to the tune of 2.2 million euros by the EU, the German lottery, and the German and Berlin governments. Two famous East Side Gallery images show a Trabant (communist-made) car bursting through the wall, and former Soviet and East German leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker sharing a fraternal kiss.

Moscow-based artist Dimitri Vrubel painted the clinch between comrades Brezhnev and Honecker, but is now at the centre of a row over its restoration.(dpa)

Vrubel was apparently aware Gallery restoration were planned ahead of the 20th anniversary Wall celebrations, but had assumed this meant just a spot of "retouching here and there."

Instead the concrete has been blasted clean, ready for a new version of his origina mural.

Alavi, who heads the East Side Gallery's Artists' Association. He told the German newspaper "Bild" that the Russian artist had been notified the Gallery wall section would need restoring, which meant "stripping it of all the murals."

Vrubel had called that an "abuse", the paper said, and said creating a brand new piece of work "was not a restoration."

Vrubel, whose iconic image has adorned T-shirts, mugs and postcards, has apparently been offered compensation of 3,000 euros ($4,000) but remains upset, according to Bild - a sign the Wall still has the power to divide.(dpa)