US fast food chain McDonald's said Tuesday it planned to open a new outlet at Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, completing the landmark's 20-year transformation from Cold War front line to money-making tourist hotspot.

• Walking the Berlin Wall then and now - National (9 Nov 09)

The 120-seat restaurant will be opposite a museum dedicated to the Berlin Wall that used to divide the city, and hopes to be selling its burgers, fries and other products from mid-2010, a spokeswoman told news agency AFP.

The 600-square-metre (6,500-square-feet) location overlooks where Soviet and US tanks famously faced off in 1961.

Spokeswoman Christiane Woerle told AFP said that McDonald's, which has come to symbolise US capitalism more than any other firm, has applied for planning permission with the German authorities.

Checkpoint Charlie was the main crossing point for foreigners between East and West Berlin from the post-war division of the city until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After the communist East German authorities erected the Berlin Wall overnight in 1961 as an "anti-capitalist protection barrier," the crossing point expanded over the decades to include several traffic lanes.