Germany Guide
Hamburg
St Pauli
Here it is then, the Sündermeile (Sin Mile) counterweight to the Kunstmeile on the opposite side of the city. Hamburg's citizens are miffed that the Reeperbahn's red lights still attract so much attention abroad. While the "Kiez" is a far cry from the road where immigrant ropemakers weaved hemp warps for the docks (Reep is rope), and its seedy underbelly attracts more than the usual quota of dubious characters the area has come a long way from the rough dockers' quarter of brawling bars where sailors spent shore leave. Commercial investment has driven out the excessive prostitution and hard drugs that characterized the late 1970s and reinvented the Reeperbahn as a nightlife centre where theatre venues trade on tourist-friendly titillation and small clubs provide some of the best nights out in town. A no-nonsense police force keeps crime figures among the city's lowest, too.
The street-spanning neon along Grosse Freiheit recalls the area's rollicking Sixties heyday, popularized during The Beatles' residence. The street's name – Great Freedom – alludes to a liberal area of free trade and religion in the seventeenth century rather than loose morals. Spielbudenplatz on the other side of the Reeperbahn is the hub of the area's regeneration. Its latest incarnation as home to musicals in the Operettenhaus, Spielbudenplatz 1, and waxwork figures in the Panoptikum, Spielbudenplatz 3 (Mon– Fri 11am–9pm, Sat 11am– midnight, Sun 10am–9pm; €5), follows the pattern set two centuries ago when tightrope walkers, snake charmers and acrobatic riders performed stunts. Nearby on the corner of Taubenstrasse, a condomerie (noon– midnight; free) that peddles saucy tourist tat as a pseudo-museum typifies the area's makeover.
The focus of local boozing is the seedy streets south, principally Friedrichstrasse and Gerhardstrasse. Herbertstrasse, skulking off the latter and screened off at either end, is the Amsterdam-style red-light district proper. Women, though not expressly prohibited, are strongly discouraged from visiting – attacks from prostitutes are not unknown. A block west, on the corner of Balduinstrasse and Erichstrasse, Harry's Hamburger Hafenbasar (Tues– Sun noon–6pm; €2.50) operates as a museum-cum-junk shop of global exotica founded on the souvenirs of a former sailor, Harry Rosenberg.