Nollendorfplatz has been the geographical and emotional centre of gay Berlin since the 1920s, when the area around it was home to dozens of bars, cabarets, and clubs in what was then the most permissive city in the world. Christopher Isherwood lived on Nollendorfstraße just off the square and wrote about the Berlin he found — a world that was demolished by the Nazi years but never entirely forgotten. Today the square itself is ringed by bars and the streets radiating south towards Winterfeldtplatz remain the core of Schöneberg's LGBTQ+ neighbourhood, with a concentration of venues that ranges from old-fashioned leather bars to newer café-bars.
On the wall of the Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn station, a pink triangle memorial commemorates the gay men, lesbians, and transgender people persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime. It was installed in 1989, making it one of the first permanent public memorials to gay victims of the Holocaust anywhere in Germany. The square itself is not beautiful — a busy traffic junction with a Jugendstil-era former cinema converted to a concert venue — but its history is dense enough that it rewards standing still for a moment.