Techno know-how

Date: 1987 Electronic dance music that features a fast beat and synthesized sounds usually without vocals or a conventional popular song structure Source: Websters

Around 500,000 people took part, according to the police, making it the smallest crowd for years and well down on the 1.5 million who came in 1999.

Fears of a possible terrorist attack are blamed for putting off some people although German police said there was no evidence of a threat.

Growing boredom with the parade's unchanging format could also be contributing to lower crowd numbers say commentators.

The Love Parade attracted 1.5 million at its peak

The Love Parade began in 1989 with motto Peace, Joy and Pancakes and attracted 150 people who danced up West Berlin's main shopping street behind a solitary float.

Now the festival - motto: Access Peace - has become a massive moving party.

Forty-five floats - stacked with huge sound systems - snaked from the edge of Tiergarten Park to Victory Column in the centre - followed by an all-night rave at clubs around the city.

'Touristic importance'

There has also been criticism that the festival has sold out and become too commercialised.

But there was no sign of any concerns of being consumed by the capitalist beast among the whistle-blowing crowd on Saturday - many of whom have been partying and parting with their cash in Berlin's clubs and bars since Friday night.

And organisers hope they have laid to rest the complaints last year from residents about the mess.

Last year one local tried to stop the parade in court, but was told that the festival was of "considerable touristic and cultural importance for Berlin".

This year organisers have forked out $140,000 for the clean-up operation, supplying 500 toilets, and have even deploying ushers to keep errant ravers on the path to peace.

Parade founder, Berlin DJ Dr Motte, spelled it out: "We don't just talk about tolerance, we go one step further. We dance tolerance."