Giants walk Berlin's streets for Unity Day celebrations

Big-city Berliners will be turned into Lilliputians as a French theatre company marches its massive marionettes through the streets as part of German Unity Day celebrations this weekend.

After months of planning, the Royal de Luxe group is ready to begin their grand-scale show that will take place across the German capital starting on Friday.

Click here to see the routes the giants will take from October 2 - 4.

The marionettes are suspended on an apparatus that allows puppeteers to move limbs, mimic facial expressions and even lick a gigantic ice cream.

Based in France, the puppets have already strolled through the streets of Iceland, Cameroon and Chile. In those locations, no details were given of events ahead of time. But for the celebration for the anniversary of German reunification, Royal de Luxe is giving those in Berlin the chance to be at the right place at the right time.

Click here for a photo gallery of the giants.

According to the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel, the marionettes will be taking their size 237 shoes through German capital’s most iconic places. The festival kicks off in front of Berlin’s red-brick city hall on Friday with an eight-metre marionette moving from east to west via the Gendarmenmarkt and Bebelplatz.

On Saturday, a giant dressed in a full diver’s suit will emerge from the Humboldthafen in front of Berlin’s main train station. A smaller second puppet will run through the Brandenburg Gate to greet him. The smaller one can just barely fit through the 26-metre high gate.

Others routes will take them throughout the city, while one massive puppet will catch a good night’s sleep on the Museum Island on October 3.

Finally, the marionettes will hold a parade on October 4 down the Straße des 17. Juni to board a ship near the Moltebrücke to wave good-bye to the city.

The event is being hailed as the biggest spectacle in Berlin since the Reichstag installation by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the then-unused parliament building in 1995.