Mannheim

LGBT Travel Guide

Why you should go to Mannheim!

Mannheim at the confluence of the Rhine and Neckar Rivers in southwestern Germany is more than what meets the eye. At first glance, it is an impressive concentration of industrial giants like Daimler, Caterpillar, Unilever, Roche and Siemens. But it is also a culturally diverse city with one of the nation's largest Baroque palaces, a long tradition of technological innovation and a major railway transfer point. UNESCO has dubbed it a City of Music, historically because of the importance of the 18th century Mannheim school of composers and pioneering orchestral techniques but also because of today's diverse musical scene and its role as the cradle of German soul and techno.

It also has rich and diverse cultural and culinary offerings because of foreign "guest workers," recruited by local factories starting in the 1960s. Some 20,000 Turks, the largest ethnic minority in Germany, live in the community. The Yavuz Sultan Selim mosque, built in 1995 and named after the landmark mosque in Istanbul, was the country's largest mosque until 2008.

The city is laid out in quadrants with streets named by letters A to U and numbers. Gay life is found in all four quadrants, mostly close to the center or around the Water Tower. LGBTQ culture has roots in the 1930s with openly gay establishments and an intellectual life similar to Berlin and Munich, but homosexuality was not decriminalized until 1993. The city hosts a three-day Christopher Street Day Pride Festival in August and has a good selection of LGBTQ-welcoming restaurants, bars, dance clubs, saunas and bookstores.

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