The Iron Curtain at Bratislava

For four decades Czechoslovakia's fortified border with Austria ran along the Danube and Morava rivers at the edge of Bratislava, lined with fences, mines and watchtowers. Hundreds of people died trying to cross the country's western frontier. At Devín, where the rivers meet below a ruined castle, a memorial gate remembers them. The border opened in December 1989, when tens of thousands of Slovaks walked across to the Austrian town of Hainburg.