LGBTQ+ remembrance, care, and AIDS memory

The journey in one line

10 places on this journey in United States, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Canada and France so far. The first rung is 3 of them, and the list keeps growing.

Two kinds of loss sit on this list. Men and women persecuted, imprisoned and killed under National Socialism, and the people who died in the AIDS epidemic. They are different histories and some of the memorials hold both at once. AIDS memory reaches far beyond LGBTQ+ communities. The National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco was built for everyone affected, and the names read there include people who were never part of any community this journey describes. Haemophiliacs, drug users, partners, nurses, children, parents. A visit implies nothing about the person visiting. Several of these places carry the pink triangle, the badge the SS used to mark men imprisoned under paragraph 175. Amsterdam, Sydney, San Francisco, Cologne and Montevideo all use the shape. It was taken back deliberately in the 1970s and 1980s, and each memorial explains its own use of it on site. The reasons for going are private. Some people are looking for a name. Some are marking a date. Some are just walking through a park and stop.

Germany did not release men convicted under paragraph 175 from that conviction until 2017, and paragraph 175 itself was not fully repealed until 1994. For decades the men who had been in the camps could not be counted as victims. The Berlin memorial opened in 2008 and the Cologne and Frankfurt memorials earlier, all of them after very long arguments about whether the loss counted. The AIDS memorials came out of a similar silence. Amsterdam's Homomonument was finished in 1987, the New York City AIDS Memorial in 2016, and Toronto's memorial began in 1988 as a community act of reading names aloud in a park. In each case the memorial exists because people made it, not because a government proposed one.

All ten are outdoors and open. There are no tickets and no hours. Winter days are short in Berlin, Amsterdam, Montreal and Toronto, and some of these are small objects in large parks that are easier to find in daylight. Anniversaries bring people. 1 December is World AIDS Day. 27 January is the international day of remembrance for victims of the Holocaust, and 17 May is the international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. Ceremonies are held at several of these sites on those dates, and they are usually public.

Where it goes

The places on this journey

What a visit means here. A visit means having stood at the memorial. Places on this journey visited are counted quietly and nothing is awarded for them.

1. 1

   National AIDS Memorial Grove

   San Francisco, United States

   

   Ten acres of Golden Gate Park given over to a memorial for everyone affected by AIDS. The idea came from San Francisco residents in 1988 who had no other way to hold their grief in public. Names are cut into the flagstones and into the Circle of Friends, and volunteers have shaped the planting by hand for more than thirty years.

   What counts as a visit

   The grove itself inside Golden Gate Park, including the Circle of Friends and the name stones.

   Access

   Open parkland with no gate and no charge. Volunteer workdays and ceremonies are published by the memorial. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

2. 2

   New York City AIDS Memorial

   New York, United States

   

   The memorial stands at St Vincent's Triangle in Greenwich Village, across from the site of St Vincent's Hospital, where the first and largest AIDS ward on the east coast cared for patients from 1984. A steel canopy shelters a granite ground plane cut with text from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. It opened on World AIDS Day in 2016.

   What counts as a visit

   The triangle park, the canopy and the inscribed paving.

   Access

   A small public park at the corner of Greenwich Avenue and West 12th Street, open and free. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

3. 3

   Homomonument

   Homomonument

   Amsterdam, Netherlands

   

   Three pink granite triangles set into the pavement beside the Westerkerk, forming one large triangle at the edge of the Keizersgracht. Unveiled in 1987, it was the first monument in the world to gay and lesbian people persecuted for their sexuality. The Stichting Homomonument describes its three purposes as remembering, protesting and celebrating.

   What counts as a visit

   The three triangles and the canal-side step, at street level between the Westermarkt and the Keizersgracht.

   Access

   Open pavement in a busy part of the city centre, accessible at any hour. Wreaths are laid here on 4 May. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

4. 4

   Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism

   Denkmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen

   Berlin, Germany

   

   A concrete block in the Tiergarten with a window in one side, showing a short film of a same-sex kiss that is replaced periodically by a new commission. Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset designed it and it was handed over to the public on 27 May 2008. The federal government charges the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe with its care.

   What counts as a visit

   The memorial block and its window, in the Tiergarten opposite the Holocaust memorial on Ebertstraße.

   Access

   Open parkland with no gate. The film inside the window is visible day and night. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

5. 5

   Pink Triangle Park and Memorial

   San Francisco, United States

   

   Fifteen granite pylons stand in a triangle at Castro, Market and 17th Streets, one for every thousand men estimated to have been imprisoned in camps under paragraph 175. Dedicated on 10 December 2001, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was the first memorial in the United States to the LGBTQ+ victims of the Holocaust.

   What counts as a visit

   The triangular park, the fifteen pylons and the bed of rose quartz stones.

   Access

   Open year round and free. The memorial invites visitors to take one rose quartz stone away with them. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

6. 6

   Rosa Winkel memorial, Nollendorfplatz

   Mahnmal »Rosa Winkel«

   Berlin, Germany

   

   A red granite triangle set into the wall of the Nollendorfplatz underground station in 1989, inscribed Totgeschlagen, Totgeschwiegen, to the homosexual victims of National Socialism. A bronze plaque added in 1993 explains the pink triangle and records that from January 1933 almost every homosexual venue around this square was closed or raided to build the police lists.

   What counts as a visit

   The memorial stone and plaque on the outside wall of the station building.

   Access

   On a public street outside the station entrance, visible at any hour. The district reports that the plaque has been attacked and repaired. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

   This entry is marked unsure in the research and is not treated as part of a complete set.

7. 7

   Gay and Lesbian Holocaust Memorial

   Sydney, Australia

   

   A pink triangular prism and a triangle of black steel columns stand in Stonewall Gardens at the top of Green Park, Darlinghurst, close to the Sydney Jewish Museum. Community groups formed the memorial project in 1991, Russell Rodrigo and Jennifer Gamble designed it, and it opened in 2001. Its inscription names women who have loved women, men who have loved men, and all those who refused the roles others expected.

   What counts as a visit

   The memorial platform in Green Park.

   Access

   Open public park in Darlinghurst. Green Park has been through major works, so paths may have changed. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

8. 8

   Parc de l'Espoir

   Parc de l'Espoir

   Montreal, Canada

   

   A small corner park in the Village, at Sainte-Catherine Est and Panet, which the city of Montreal describes as a place of meditation and gathering dedicated to the memory of people in Quebec who died of HIV and AIDS. It grew from a community occupation of the empty lot in the early 1990s.

   What counts as a visit

   The park at 1336 rue Sainte-Catherine Est.

   Access

   Open corner park with no set hours listed by the city. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

9. 9

   Toronto AIDS Memorial, Barbara Hall Park

   Toronto, Canada

   The memorial began in 1988 as a community act of reading names aloud in this park in the Church-Wellesley Village, and was made permanent in 1993. Names are carried on panels among the trees. The same park holds the Trans Memorial. The City of Toronto calls it one of the city's most significant sites of public remembrance.

   What counts as a visit

   The memorial panels and the surrounding park, off Church Street.

   Access

   The city has a park improvement project under way that includes work on both memorials, so parts of the site may be fenced or moved. Check the project page before travelling. Checked 2026-09-16.

   A place of reflection

   Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

10. 10

    Aux oubliées et oubliés

    Aux oubliées et oubliés !

    Paris, France

    A steel wand five metres by seven, matt black on one face and mirror polished on the other, standing at the water's edge in the jardin du Port de l'Arsenal. Jean-Luc Verna made it and the city of Paris unveiled it on 17 May 2025. It remembers people deported for homosexuality and all LGBTQIA+ people persecuted through history. The association Les Oublié-e-s de la Mémoire pressed for it from 2013.

    What counts as a visit

    The sculpture and its setting in the jardin du Port de l'Arsenal, in the 12th arrondissement.

    Access

    A public garden beside the marina, near Bastille. Garden gates close at night in the Paris park season schedule. Checked 2026-09-16.

    A place of reflection

    Check access · last checked September 16, 2026

Respect and access

Read the inscription before anything else. Each of these memorials states who it is for, and the wording differs from place to place. People come here to grieve. Keep your voice down, give others room, and do not photograph someone who is visiting. Photograph the memorial itself. At the Pink Triangle Memorial in San Francisco visitors are invited to take a single stone, and that invitation comes from the memorial, not from custom. A recorded visit here means only that a person was at a place. It says nothing about their orientation, their gender, their health, or whom they have lost.

A place of reflection

This is a memorial or a site of atrocity. Visitors are asked to be quiet, to follow the custodian's guidance on photography, and to treat it as somewhere people grieve.

Opening times, prices, permits and eligibility change. Nothing on this page is a statement about today. Follow the Check access link on a place before you plan around it.

Sources

• aidsmemorial.orghttps://www.aidsmemorial.org/grove · checked September 16, 2026
• nycaidsmemorial.orghttps://www.nycaidsmemorial.org/ · checked September 16, 2026
• homomonument.nlhttps://www.homomonument.nl/ · checked September 16, 2026
• stiftung-denkmal.dehttps://www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en/memorials/memorial-to-the-persecuted-homosexuals-under-national-socialism/ · checked September 16, 2026
• pinktrianglememorial.orghttps://pinktrianglememorial.org/ · checked September 16, 2026
• berlin.dehttps://www.berlin.de/ba-tempelhof-schoeneberg/politik-und-verwaltung/beauftragte/queere-lebensweisen/artikel.1228735.php · checked September 16, 2026
• cityofsydney.nsw.gov.auhttps://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/monuments-and-memorials/gay-and-lesbian-holocaust-memorial · checked September 16, 2026
• montreal.cahttps://montreal.ca/en/places/parc-de-lespoir · checked September 16, 2026
• toronto.cahttps://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/construction-new-facilities/park-facility-projects/barbara-hall-park-improvements/ · checked September 16, 2026
• paris.frhttps://www.paris.fr/pages/aux-oubliees-et-oublies-une-baguette-magique-pour-representer-la-lutte-contre-les-lgbtqia-phobies-30854 · checked September 16, 2026

TravelDay selected and grouped these places. Naming a custodian, a government agency or UNESCO as a source is not a claim that any of them endorsed this journey.