Berlin gay area
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It’s the type of place you can return to over and over, where the bartenders will remember your last order and where you always make a friend.
To remember: Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime
stiftung-denkmal.de
This Memorial is often overlooked by the more dominant Holocaust memorial in Berlin—the one commemorating Jewish victims.
The cafe is also known for its unpretentious vibe, as well the lavish vegan breakfast.
Website: https://www.cafe-morgenrot.de/en
Address: Kastanienallee 85, 10435 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 44 31 78 44
Instagram: @cafe_morgenrot
BBC Travel's The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.
The new map features three walking tours through Berlin & over 50 other queer places — all our favorite recommendations we’d share with our family and friends. From museums, shops, sights, restaurants, cafés, bars, clubs and more, you’ll find plenty of LGBT options for every budget. There are also shops along the BergmannstraĂźe as well as live music venues where LGBTQ+ citizens and visitors meet and have fun.
Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!
The best of LGBTQ+ Berlin
A local legend, Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke has undergone a facelift in recent years, but the on-stage stripper pole is very much still intact. Our Berlin writer Nathan Ma knows this city like the back of his hand, and has handpicked the best LGBTQ+ spots all over the city for cocktails, dancing and a lot of queer joy.
It serves both as a memorial to the homosexual victims of National Socialism and as a lasting symbol against exclusion, intolerance and animosity towards gays and lesbians.
To shop: Other Nature
other-nature.de
Self-described as a “feminist, queer-oriented, eco-friendly, vegan sex shop,” the Other Nature sex shop has a friendly and approachable method to selling sex toys.
ach walking tour focuses on some of the best tourist sites, including many LGBT specific places. Make yourself at home while taking in the maximalist décor.
It’s an odd location for a gay bar, wedged among Turkish snack bars in a down-at-heel 1960s housing development, but this unpretentious space has been packed since it opened, mainly with gay and lesbian beer lovers, thanks to the excellent range of brews on offer.
Think again, my friend.
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As a little teaser, I’ve highlighted my favorite queer places in Berlin here.
Top 5 Queer Hotspots in Berlin
To drink: Facciola Wine Bar
facciola-berlin.de
Facciola looks like a lovely little wine bar from the outside—a window with some plants, a red awning, a handful of Berliners sitting on the stoop.
There are plenty of private booths for shyer songbirds, but the real magic happens in the main room. Best for queer culture and history: Café Morgenrot
CafĂ© Morgenrot blends coffee with a healthy serving of Berlin's queer history. I teamed up with BertaBerlin to create the new QueerBerlin map— a 100% local guide to Berlin which includes three walking tours through Berlin.
Inside, the bartenders (friends Aurora and Sebastian) make the environment more than cozy, though. But we’ve got you covered. Berlin’s gay neighborhood of Schöneberg was one of the world’s first, home in the 1920s to legendary gay icons like Marlene Dietrich and Christopher Isherwood.
More and more millennials around the world are identifying as LGBT or queer, and as that happens, our world becomes a little bit more exciting and interesting.
You’ll find the cream of the Berlin queer scene here, as well as the occasional international celeb slumming it in style (Rupert Everett and, erm, Tara Reid have both been spotted here). Cabins, saunas and chill-out areas combine to provide a rather opulent experience, and the clientele is always a good mix. Berlin isn’t always the easiest city to discover thanks to its sprawling size and distinct neighborhoods—it’s a city of villages after all—but the QueerBerlin map will help guide the way!
The map includes many of my favorite places such as the Reichstag, a beer gardens inside the Tiergarten, hidden shops, an art gallery inside a bunker and of course my favorite queer bars, clubs and parties.
Found in the trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood, this collective-run cafe is a meeting spot for left-wing activists and happens to neighbour Tuntenhaus – one of Berlin's last remaining queer squats.
Berlin's squat culture dates to the 1970s when young activists occupied empty buildings to save them from demolition and protest against housing problems and gentrification.
Every year, the lesbian and gay street festival takes place here, which marks the start of Pride Week. And despite Berlin being one of Europe's most LGBTQ+-friendly cities, Cormac explains, "Queer culture in Berlin has a long history of squat culture, of people trying to live outside of the capitalist model… I think that becomes very relevant because a lot of queer people maybe haven't felt so embraced by mainstream capitalism, or the job opportunities in the past maybe haven’t been as available to them."
Many of Berlin's squats have been shut down by authorities, and the future of Tuntenhaus was at risk of a similar fate, but after a successful campaign, the squat remains home to one of the last queer collective housing communities in Berlin.
Cormac adds that it’s important "to be mindful that people live there and to respect people's privacy", so visitors can drop by Café Morgenrot for information about squat communities.
It was opened in 2008 by Berlin’s gay major at the time, Klaus Wowereit (the same one who coined the popular “poor, but sexy” phrase to describe Berlin).
The memorial features a stone slab with a small window through which a looped video of two men (and now also, two women) kiss. Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!
Been there, done that?