At a Berlin dinner party, few punch lines used to be as reliable as naming the city’s Wedding neighborhood as the next big thing. This working-class area has been trumpeted as up-and-coming since the Berlin Wall came down 26 years ago. But at last this 3.5-square-mile district is showing signs of delivering on that promise.

Many of the new, noteworthy Wedding businesses serve night owls — which might be just as well. Despite the Unesco-protected, Weimer-era minimalist architecture of the Schillerpark Settlement and the occasional grand houses from the 19th-century that survived World War II, much of this northwestern neighborhood remains not too easy on the eye, making it perhaps best experienced in the dark.

The transformation of Wedding, named after a 13th-century nobleman, began around Gericht Street, where a derelict municipal swimming pool was reincarnated in 2009 as an exhibition space named Stattbad, literally “instead-pool,” where artworks hung in locker rooms, pop-up vegan supper clubs took place in corridors, and ravers danced to pulsing electronica from midnight to noon in the drained pool. Though city authorities closed its doors, citing fire code violations this summer, Stattbad helped to popularize the hodgepodge neighborhood’s reputation as edgy and nocturnal.