EBG Rating: 8.8/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
A broad but shallow range covering most bases adequately, but they do stock Ratsherrn beer and have a house beer, which is worth an extra tick.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Wonderful vivid exterior channelling the Art Deco of 1950s US style cafes, theatres, etc, and street art/murals on the adjoining wall. It is as though the bar is desperate to greet you. Inside, an open plan space with old wooden booths, candlelit on each table. Bar to the left corner with jukebox adjacent.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
At once exuberant, flamboyant and confident, yet also humble, down-to-earth and stripped back, Zum Silbersack has bottled lightning, gathered together so many elements both tangible and not that comprise great bars. You could equally have a loud singalong as a romantic clinch in here.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️
Snacks, jukebox, smoking permitted.

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️❤️
Given its fame, reasonable value for money.

Description:
It is difficult to put into words just what a significant bar Zum Silbersack is for St. Pauli and for Hamburg – but we’re going to try.

Open since 1949, and operated by the same landlady, Erna Thomsen between then and her death in 2012, Zum Silbersack’s reputation evolved from a humble pub to a beacon, a fixture and an institution of St. Pauli.

The pub briefly closed during her death as none of her relatives were interested in running the pub.

To ensure its survival a joint venture and community group was established, who purchased the property and now lease the pub to Dominik Grossfeld, an employee of Erna’s who is keen – and has been faithful to his word – to leave the place, its format and its atmosphere without making meaningful changes unless where absolutely necessary.

Set just off the Reeperbahn on the street which coined the name of this bar, a colourful, striking and attractive facade greets you as you approach. Art Deco era neon lights and street art on the facade and adjoining wall beckon you in.

Inside, you’ll find an interesting space, open plan but with a series of niches. Wooden furnishings that are worn, smoothed by the many bodies that have sat or perched on them over the decades. Tables are candlelit, and provide a genteel nature to what you’d otherwise assume was a rough and ready Reeperbahn boozer. But that duality is at the key to its success.

At once exuberant, flamboyant and confident, yet also humble, down-to-earth and stripped back, Zum Silbersack has bottled lightning, gathered together so many elements both tangible and not that comprise great bars.

Each generation that passes through St Pauli bemoans the change to their area, the attitudes new generation, the introduction of corporatisation, property developer, gentrification, struggling to marry up the image of it in their heads with the reality that it has long been an area for sleaze, squalor and simultaneously fun, honesty and escape. This will continue to be the case now, as it will in 20 years and 40 years time.

Yes, the likes of BrewDog are pecking away at the corners of the district, but while bars like Silbersack remain, there will always be the kernel of the best of St Pauli, a beacon on the hill.

Watch out for a performance of Silbersack’s anthem “On The Reeperbahn at Half-Past Midnight” which is sung by locals as each night reaches its end. Hopefully it will be sung for decades to come.