Munich

The scene is compact and walks end to end, concentrated between the Glockenbachviertel and Gärtnerplatz: afternoon cafés and bars such as the Café Nil and the Kraftwerk, classic bars such as the Bar Rendezvous, the Bavarian-flavoured Edelheiss and the Ochsengarten, open since 1967, the Prosecco for schlager and the NY.Club as the only fully gay club, now beside the central station. Queer techno lives in parties inside mixed clubs such as the Blitz, and the lesbian night in events such as She-La.

The tourist office honestly documents that the number of venues has fallen since the eighties and nineties: the scene is smaller than Berlin's or Cologne's, but it has a historical depth nobody else can match.

A year-round queer calendar: CSD München in June (two-week PrideWeeks, PolitParade and the new PrideMeile on Ludwigstraße, with clubbing inside the city hall itself), the Hans-Sachs-Straßenfest in August, the one-of-a-kind Rosa Wiesn at Oktoberfest (~8,000 people at the Bräurosl tent on the first Sunday) and Pink Christmas, the queer Christmas market at Stephansplatz in Nov-Dec.

For the Rosa Wiesn, get there early: the tent fills up first thing. For CSD, book a hotel 2-3 months ahead.

The Glockenbachviertel has been refuge and showcase for a century: from the Schwarzfischer bar destroyed by the first big Nazi raid (1934) to the 2017 memorial, from Fassbinder's table at the Deutsche Eiche to same-sex-couple traffic lights and the square named in 1998 after Karl Heinrich Ulrichs — the pioneer who in 1867 stood before the German jurists' congress in Munich to demand decriminalising love between men.

And a political milestone: in 1996 Munich elected Europe's first councillor from a gay-lesbian list (Rosa Liste), still on the council today.

The community network is dense. Sub has been the centre for queer male communication and culture since 1982, with its own café, and beside it sit LeZ, the lesbian and queer centre, the Diversity Café, for under-27s, and the advice service for trans and intersex people. On sexual health, the Checkpoint München run by Münchner Aids-Hilfe, at Lindwurmstraße 71, does anonymous HIV and STI testing and gives PrEP advice, with a dedicated service for trans and intersex people.

The city council also maintains its own institutional LGBTQI+ pages: the institutional grounding of the scene is among the strongest in Germany.