Homomonument
memorial in Amsterdam

The Homomonument is a memorial in the centre of Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. It commemorates all LGBTQ people who have been persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Opened on 5 September 1987, it was the first monument in the world to commemorate gays and lesbians who were killed by the German Nazi regime.
The monument takes the form of three large pink triangles made of granite, set into the ground, which together compose a larger triangle. It is located on the bank of the Keizersgracht canal, near the historic Westerkerk church. The Homomonument was designed to "inspire and support lesbians and gays in their struggle against denial, oppression and discrimination."
During the Netherlands' annual Remembrance Day ceremony on 4 May, wreaths are laid on the monument to commemorate LGBT victims of persecution. A day later, on Liberation Day, the monument becomes the site of a street party.
Symbolism
The Homomonument is an abstract composition of three pink triangles made of granite. The symbol has historical roots; the pink triangle was a cloth badge used in Nazi concentration camps to identify men who had been jailed for homosexuality, which also included bisexual men and transgender women. It is estimated that 100,000 men were arrested and half of these spent time imprisoned during Nazi rule.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q51411. Authority coordinates are 52.374, 4.885. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Homomonument” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.