Beatles-Platz in Hamburg

Beatles-Platz sits at the corner of the Reeperbahn and Große Freiheit in Hamburg's St. Pauli district. The square is 29 m across, paved in black granite to look like a record, and holds five life-size stainless-steel silhouettes of the Beatles' Hamburg line-up. First Mayor Ole von Beust opened it on 11 September 2008.

Five figures, and one of them has no fixed name

The silhouettes show the band as it was in Hamburg, not the later Fab Four. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison are three of the figures. The drummer was left deliberately unspecific, so it can stand for Pete Best, who drummed for the band in St. Pauli, or for Ringo Starr. The fifth figure is Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bass player, and it stands a few steps away from the other four. Sutcliffe died in 1962.

The figures are cut-out outlines held in stainless-steel frames. Visitors can step into a frame and take the place of a band member in a photo.

A record on the pavement

Hamburg architects Carsten Dohse and Franzis Stich won the design competition. Their square is a circle of black granite 29 m in diameter, laid out like a record on a turntable. Steel bands run along the joints between the granite slabs, where a record's grooves would be, and about 70 Beatles song titles are engraved into them. Lamps set into the rim switch on in sequence at night so the disc appears to turn.

The engravings got off to a bad start. Several titles were misspelt when the square opened. Among the reported mistakes was "Can't Buy Melove". There was no time to fix them before the ceremony, and the faulty plates were swapped out later.

A separate plaque on the square states that the Beatles' musical career began here in St. Pauli and credits two Hamburg men in connection with it: composer and producer Bert Kaempfert and music publisher Alfred K. Schacht.

From radio idea to opening day

The idea came from Stephan Heller, programme director at the Hamburg oldies station Oldie 95, in 2001. The design competition followed in August 2005. Ground was broken on 29 May 2008, with Heller, the district and the city's chief building officer at the ceremony. Three months later, on 11 September 2008, Ole von Beust opened the square in front of about 400 invited guests.

Reports agree the bill came to more than EUR 500,000, well above the first estimate of about EUR 100,000. The exact total is given as EUR 520,000 in one chronology and EUR 550,000 elsewhere. According to German sources, donations, sponsors and the City of Hamburg each paid roughly a third.

The clubs are a short walk up Große Freiheit

The square marks the bottom of Große Freiheit, the side street where the band played its first Hamburg dates. Going by map coordinates, the Star-Club memorial stone in the courtyard at No. 39 is about 145 m away, the Kaiserkeller at No. 36 about 160 m, and the Indra at No. 64 about 250 m. The Indra is where the Beatles started on 17 August 1960. Reeperbahn S-Bahn station is about 130 m from the square.