Past and future by Thomas Riess

View across the Spree River to the Cathedral and TV Tower in Berlin. The Spree Canal in Berlin is part of the Spree-Oder-Waterway (SOW). Over the centuries, the Cöllnische Stadtgraben developed into today's approximately two-kilometer-long artificial waterway, which is managed by the Spree-Havel Waterways and Shipping Authority. The importance of the Spree Canal and the city lock located in its course for inland navigation on the Spree declined from 1894 onwards with the commissioning of the Mühlendamm Lock, until the city lock was finally decommissioned in 2000. The canal is closed to recreational shipping and is no longer navigable due to the Kupfergraben weir. The course of the Spree River was impassable for ships and rafts due to the mill dam created between 1220 and 1230. With the increase of trade and traffic on the water, the former Cöllnische Stadtgraben, a branch of the Spree, was expanded and equipped with a lock. This first wooden lock "auf dem Werder", the later city lock, was built in 1578 and was later extended several times. High industrialization in the German Empire required ever larger ships and the city lock was enlarged for the last time in 1885. At that time, it was already referred to as the eye of a needle in Berlin shipping. The Spree Canal branches off the left side of the Spree-Oder-Waterway (SOW) from the Berlin Spree at kilometer 17.90, just before the Mühlendamm Lock. It remains south of Fischerinsel and then runs almost parallel to Märkisches Ufer street in the direction of Spittelmarkt, passing Schloßplatz, Zeughaus and Lustgarten. At the Bode Museum on Museum Island, it flows back into the Spree immediately below the Monbijou Bridge at kilometer 16.31 of the SOW.