[1][2] Lenné designed a canal with sloped walls, an average width of 20 m (66 ft) at the surface and locks near both ends to control the water depth.

The Landwehr Canal leaves the Spree River in the eastern harbour in Friedrichshain, east of the city centre.

Although this has since been filled and partially converted to a public garden, its route can still be traced by the parallel flanking streets with their distinctive damm suffixes.

[3] Further west in Kreuzberg, the canal is paralleled for about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) by the U1 line of the Berlin U-Bahn, which runs here as an elevated railway.

[4][5] On 8 June 1962, a party of fourteen East German refugees commandeered the river steamer Friedrich Wolff, erected steel plates around the wheelhouse and sailed from the Spree into the Landwehr Canal.