Historical Town Hall of Münster: Civic Hall and Site of the Peace of Münster
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Prussia
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page25 sections
History
The Historical Town Hall of Münster is a medieval civic building in Münster, Germany, whose origins followed the granting of city rights around 1170. It became a meeting place for the city council and courts, and its Gothic facade later expressed the city’s claims to civic autonomy. Together with St. Paul’s Cathedral, it remains one of Münster’s principal civic landmarks.
Origins of the Civic Town Hall
Münster’s early town-hall history cannot be dated precisely because the Anabaptist regime destroyed the city archive in 1534–1535. A simple timber-framed building was probably erected around 1170 or soon afterward near the Michaelistor and the episcopal cathedral precinct. Before 1200, it was probably replaced by a stone structure measuring about 14.50 by 18 metres.
The stone building is first identified in 1250 as a meeting place for the lay assessors, who participated in civic justice. Its lower section later became known as the Council Chamber, or Peace Hall. The plot was probably reserved when Prinzipalmarkt was first divided into building parcels, apparently with the bishop’s agreement. Its alignment opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral and the episcopal palace gave physical expression to the authority claimed by Münster’s hereditary civic nobility, the Erbmänner. This group dominated the medieval council and many municipal offices, and the later decorated facade strengthened the town’s political statement toward the bishop.
The Citizens’ Hall and Medieval Expansion
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, a new building was placed between the stone town hall and Prinzipalmarkt. This Bürgerhalle, or Citizens’ Hall, probably dates from around 1320, when Johann III von Deckenbrock was mayor. By 1337, a division between the citizens’ space at the front and the council’s chamber behind it was established. Around 1395, the front section was extended by about four metres into the market and incorporated into the continuous arcade of Prinzipalmarkt.
The town hall served many purposes. It housed the council and higher court, while lower courts met before or beneath the building. Its rooms and cellar were used as a market, warehouse, cloth and grain store, wine store, weighing house, armoury, occasional performance and dance venue, and main guardhouse. The armoury held the city’s weapons, and merchants rented upper spaces and cellar rooms for their goods.
Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Changes
In 1576–1577, the roof over the Council Chamber and armoury was rebuilt, and a two-storey annex was added on the eastern side. Called successively the Small Council Chamber, Stoveken, and Winter Council Chamber, it provided a warmer meeting room during the colder months. A third storey was added in 1892. The annex was destroyed during the Second World War and replaced by a stair tower during postwar reconstruction.
The town hall also acquired a commemorative and museum role from the sixteenth century onward. Objects associated with the Anabaptist period, civic justice, the Peace of Westphalia, and Münster’s municipal history were preserved or displayed there. On 22 January 1536, the three leading Anabaptists, Jan van Leiden, Bernd Krechting, and Bernd Knipperdolling, were publicly executed on a platform in front of the building. Four heated tongs used during the executions were later displayed on the arcade pillars as a warning. They were moved to the Peace Hall in 1848 and loaned to the state museum in 1921.
The Sendschwert, a sword symbolising Münster’s market rights and the stricter law applied during the three annual Send fairs, has been displayed at the town hall’s northwestern corner since 1578. The original, more than four hundred years old, was stolen in 2000 and replaced by a replica in 2001. Its wooden supporting arm had already been replaced in 1923.
The Peace Congress and the Peace Hall
During preparations for the Peace Congress, Münster was declared neutral. The Peace of Westphalia was the group of treaties concluded in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years’ War and settled related conflicts, including the war between Spain and the Dutch Republic. On 27 May 1643, imperial court councillor Johann Krane read the emperor’s declaration of neutrality in the Council Chamber, while a representative of the prince-bishop read a corresponding declaration. For the negotiations, the declaration released Münster from its obligations to the Empire and the bishopric.
Between 1643 and 1648, more than 150 envoys connected with the congress came to the town hall. The city ceremonially welcomed them in the Council Chamber with a drink from the Golden Cockerel, a gilded-silver vessel made in Nuremberg. Everhard Alerdinck was commissioned to decorate the building and repainted and highlighted the gable in 1646.
The Peace of Westphalia was not negotiated or formally ratified in the town hall. On 15 May 1648, however, the signed treaties of the Peace of Münster were exchanged and ceremonially affirmed in the Council Chamber. The settlement ended the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the seven Dutch provinces and recognised Dutch independence. It also marked Switzerland’s departure from the Holy Roman Empire. The chamber became known as the Peace Hall during the eighteenth century.
Prussian and Nineteenth-Century Uses
After Münster became part of Prussia and the capital of Westphalia following the Congress of Vienna, the commemorative importance of the hall received increasing emphasis. During a visit on 21 September 1817, Frederick William III ordered its preservation. From 1826 to 1862, the Peace Hall was also used by the parliament of the Prussian Province of Westphalia. The municipal council met there during the March Revolution of 1848, a period of political upheaval and demands for constitutional change in the German states.
Between 1858 and 1861, the unused roof space was converted into a large municipal banqueting hall. Government building councillor Wilhelm Salzenberg designed a Gothic-style barrel vault for the room. The work was later criticised because it disrupted the earlier visual distinction between the rectangular building body and its triangular roof.
Destruction and Reconstruction
Allied bombing on 28 October 1944 hit the town hall several times and left it completely burned out. At approximately 6:25 p.m., the unsupported show gable collapsed onto Prinzipalmarkt. Only the lower arches and the arcades of the two outer tracery windows survived. Much of the rubble was cleared after the war, and remaining portions of the facade were later removed during rebuilding.
The Peace Hall’s panelling, ceiling, and furnishings had been evacuated to Wöbbel Castle in 1942, but its decorated windows and monumental southern fireplace were destroyed. In 1948, the city decided to restore the hall for the tercentenary of the Peace of Westphalia. The lost fireplace was replaced with one from the Krameramtshaus.
A merchants’ association began a rebuilding campaign in November 1948. Heinrich Bartmann won an architectural competition, but his plans were not implemented because municipal funds were needed for water and gas supplies, schools, and hospitals. In 1950, the city allowed rebuilding without direct municipal financing and established a reconstruction committee. Public donations of money, materials, and labour, together with eight lottery campaigns, raised 873,000 Deutsche Marks, nearly half the total cost. More than 30,000 people attended the foundation-stone ceremony on 9 July 1950.
Heinrich Benteler directed the reconstruction, while Heinrich Bartmann and later Edmund Scharf worked on the interior. Benteler chose a historically based recreation rather than an exact copy, leaving minor differences in the facade. The foundation stone was laid in 1950, the roof-raising ceremony took place on 9 July 1952, the eastern gable was completed in 1953, and the Prinzipalmarkt facade followed in October 1954. The entire building was completed on 30 October 1958. The result became a symbol of Münster’s recovery from wartime destruction, although some historians and architects criticised it as a historicising replica rather than an original medieval building.
Recent Preservation and Civic Role
The gable was restored in 1992. The town hall and Stadtweinhaus were altered in 1997, lower facade sections were restored in 2002 and 2004, and extensive restoration took place in 2006. The roof was renewed in 2013 with hollow tiles from eastern Westphalia. From 2024, the facade was repeatedly attacked with paint during protests concerning the Israeli military operation in Gaza. Difficult cleaning and related repairs continued into 2026, and surveillance cameras were installed.
Münster and Osnabrück were designated “Sites of the Peace of Westphalia” with the European Heritage Seal on 15 April 2015. An application for UNESCO World Heritage status had failed because the postwar building fabric was not original. The later designation recognised the site’s European historical and intangible significance rather than the survival of an intact medieval structure.
Since 1907, the Lord Mayor’s official residence and the city administration have occupied nearby municipal buildings on Klemensstraße, Heinrich-Brünig-Straße, and Syndikatsgasse. The historic town hall continues to be used occasionally for council meetings, receptions, commemorations, cultural events, elections, and ceremonial functions. Council meetings now take place in the Festsaal rather than the Peace Hall. In 2022, the Peace Hall hosted a meeting of the G7 foreign ministers chaired by Annalena Baerbock. The removal of the hall’s cross at the request of the Foreign Ministry’s protocol department prompted public criticism.
Remains
Facade and Principal Levels
The building has four principal levels: cellar, arcade level, main level, and attic. The arcade level contains the open Bogenhalle, the Bürgerhalle, and the Peace Hall at the rear. The main level contains the Festsaal at the front and the Rüstkammer above the Peace Hall. The Gothic facade rises 31 metres above the main roof and is built principally of Baumberger sandstone. Its public frontage toward Prinzipalmarkt combines the arcade, main level, and stepped gable.
Bogenhalle and Arcade
The open Bogenhalle lies behind four pointed arches and about four metres behind them, beside the Bürgerhalle. Its five round columns form part of the continuous Prinzipalmarkt arcade. The original capitals carried oak leaves, grotesque creatures, a panther, lion, eagle, phoenix, demon masks, and vine leaves representing virtues and vices. These capitals were lost during the Second World War. New decoration installed in 1963–1964 includes crab ornament on the two outer capitals, the four elements on the central capital, figures of Anabaptist leaders on the capital to its left, and the four ages of life on the capital to its right. The five columns were lengthened by 65 centimetres during restoration.
The spaces between the arcade arches were painted until 1824. The earliest known scheme probably belonged to the second quarter of the fifteenth century and used five circles, each about 1.88 metres across. Their subjects probably included an imperial eagle, two arms of the Münster bishopric, a seal case, and the arms of Bishop Heinrich II von Moers. The decoration was altered in 1588, repainted by Everhard Alerdinck in 1646, and renewed by Johann Georg Legleitner in 1780. The final scheme showed Charlemagne, two knights bearing Münster’s arms, and two knights saluting the emperor.
Gable and Main Facade
Four large pointed tracery windows on the main level stand behind the Festsaal. Earlier facade decoration included life-size canopy figures of Jesus Christ, Mary, the Archangel Michael, Ludgerus, and Lambertus. Johann Katmann made the figures around 1646, and Bernhard Allard replaced them in 1865–1866. Only Ludgerus and Lambertus survived the collapse of the gable in 1944; they are now displayed on the north and south sides of the building.
The seven-axis gable is divided by eight slender pinnacled piers, or narrow vertical supports ending in pointed features. Six blind windows occupy the outer axes, while the central axis contains three vertically arranged pointed niches. Wooden doors in these openings allowed goods to be moved into and out of the attic until 1774. After storage there was prohibited, the openings were bricked up in 1863 and remain visible as niches.
The pinnacles carry four angels at the highest level, two standing figures in the middle, and a blowing guard and lookout figure below. The upper composition is often called the “Coronation of Mary,” although Mary is already shown wearing a crown and the intended subject remains uncertain. Repairs changed the composition, and its original appearance is not recorded. A weathered statue of Mary and the royal figure beneath it are displayed in the Bürgerhalle.
Below the upper composition stands a royal figure holding a sceptre and orb. The figure has been identified both as Solomon and as Charlemagne. Beneath it is the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, while Münster’s arms appear twice lower on the gable, held by facing griffins. The theological programme remains partly unresolved. One interpretation understands the figures as stages of expectation, promise, and fulfilment culminating in Christ.
Citizens’ Hall and Peace Hall
Bürgerhalle
The Bürgerhalle is a large room supported by four substantial pillars. A stone staircase at the rear leads toward the Festsaal and Stadtweinhaus, while a doorway opens into the Peace Hall. Above the doorway is the inscription Pax Optima Rerum, meaning “Peace is the highest good.” The room contains civic armour and weapons, the replica Sendschwert, the surviving gable sculptures of Mary and the king, and a model of a late-medieval Hanseatic cog. The Hanseatic League was a commercial network of northern European towns and merchant communities, and Münster’s membership supported the prosperity associated with its late-medieval civic architecture.
Peace Hall
The Peace Hall measures about 10 by 15 metres. Its grey tiled floor is bordered by Renaissance-style wooden panelling, a symmetrical form of classical-inspired woodwork popular from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The panelling on the west and east walls dates from 1577 and was designed by Hermann tom Ring.
The west entrance door bears an image of the resurrected Christ. Above a twelve-person bench, the panelling presents Christ, the twelve apostles, and Paul, separated by slender columns and small decorated gables. The figures are arranged as Bartholomew, Thomas, Andrew, James the Younger, Matthew, Philip, Peter, Christ, John, James the Elder, Simon, Jude Thaddaeus, Matthias, and Paul.
The east wall contains four large windows. Their original diamond-pattern glazing included eight allegorical figures of divine and cardinal virtues, but the windows were destroyed in 1944 and replaced with plain tinted glass. The panelling depicts the four Evangelists, based on prints made by Heinrich Aldegrever in 1549, as well as Moses as lawgiver and the seven liberal arts. These traditional subjects are grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. A bench along the wall seats fourteen people.
The north wall contains a large cabinet with 22 small compartments in two rows. Its decoration includes biblical scenes, patrons of Münster parish churches, heraldic images, human vices, and two subjects that cannot be securely classified. A central cross dated 1540 stands before the cabinet, and municipal officeholders were and are sworn before it. The upper panelling includes carved foliage, the abbreviation “ihs,” the arms of the Münster bishopric, Münster’s arms, the abbreviation “ma,” and circular motifs including a dove.
The original southern fireplace, made in 1577 and decorated with the Judgement of Solomon, was destroyed in 1944. It was replaced by a fireplace made in 1621 for the Krameramtshaus. This fireplace depicts the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and includes a figure of Justice, commercial and maritime emblems, and an iron plate commemorating the Peace of Westphalia. The plate shows a crown and sceptre above three doves with olive branches and bears the inscription “Anno 1648. Pax optima rerum, 24. Oct.”
Thirty-seven portraits of sovereigns and delegates associated with the Peace Congress hang in the hall. Thirty-four were painted by Anselm van Hulle or copied by his assistant Jan Baptist Floris and hung in 1649. The portraits of Johann von Reumont and Swedish envoy Matthias Mylonius Biörenklou were not by Floris. Johann Rudolf Wettstein’s portrait was added in 1966 as a gift from the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Numbers found during the 1998 restoration helped restore the presumed original hanging order.
The room also preserves evidence of its judicial use. A central barrier separated judges and assessors from litigants and spectators, and a warning plaque carries the words Audiatur et altera pars, meaning “Let both parties be heard.” A Flemish chandelier hangs from an uneven eight-point stag antler. It is decorated with hunting scenes, animals, the city arms, a late-Gothic Madonna, a crown, two golden spheres, and a carved rose. Its surrounding inscription urges judges to love justice.
Festsaal and Rüstkammer
The Festsaal occupies the front of the main level behind the large Gothic windows. Salzenberg’s 1861 version had a high barrel vault extending into the former attic and life-size paintings of figures associated with Münster, including Charlemagne, Ludgerus, and Franz von Fürstenberg. The hall burned in 1944 and was rebuilt with a flat ceiling corresponding to the earlier fourteenth-century form. Its postwar colour scheme uses Münster’s gold, red, and silver.
The Rüstkammer lies above the Peace Hall and has approximately the same dimensions. It formerly held the city guard’s weapons and is now a sparsely furnished fireplace room.
Cellar and Attic
The cellar beneath the Bürgerhalle and Peace Hall was used for wine storage from 1545. A civic wine server worked there by 1550, and as much as 20,000 litres of wine were stored before the Stadtweinhaus opened in 1616. The timber ceiling was replaced by brick cross-vaults in 1563 beneath the Bürgerhalle and in 1576 beneath the Peace Hall. The cellar was later rented to merchants for storage, and a restaurant operated there from 1924 until the wartime destruction.
The attic is divided into four sections and rises 15 metres from floor to ridge. Three sections stored cloth, wood, and grain, for which merchants paid rent from 1664. Flammable goods were prohibited there in 1774 because of fire risk, and the former loading openings were sealed in 1863.
Associated Buildings
Stadtweinhaus
The Stadtweinhaus stands immediately north of the town hall, separated by a narrow lane and linked by an upper-level passage between the two large halls. Built in 1615–1616 under First Mayor Bernhard II von Droste zu Hülshoff by Johann von Bocholt, it replaced the town-hall cellar as the city’s wine store and later housed the city guard. It is the only surviving annex. Its ground floor retains a wine tavern, while its large hall is used for council and ceremonial functions.
Former Gruthaus and Schreiberei
The former Gruthaus stood east of the town hall. It housed the production of gruit beer, made with a mixture derived from a heath plant, and later contained the city’s representative Grut Hall. The building probably originated around 1265 and was rebuilt around the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century. It was demolished in 1867–1868. The nearby Gruetgasse, first recorded as Gruetstegge in 1501, preserves its association with the building.
The Schreiberei was a three-storey brick annex with a simple triangular gable. Its basement prison contained several cells, including the prison in which Jan van Leiden was held in 1535. A later staircase revealed an older fireplace decorated with Münster’s arms, although its subsequent location is unknown. The Schreiberei was demolished in 1870.
Former Archive and Other Annexes
The Schmiedeturm probably originated in the late sixteenth century and served mainly as the city archive, although prisoners were held there until 1772. Its eastern part was converted into the archive in 1576 and expanded in 1624, with access provided by a small spiral stair. After the archive moved in 1906, the upper floor sheltered homeless people from 1918. Severe wartime damage in 1944 left the building unreconstructed.
Steveninks Hof was first recorded in 1503. After rebuilding in 1594, it became the Syndikatshaus and housed the city syndic until 1704. During the Peace Congress, it accommodated city commander Johann von Reumont. The former Weinhof, demolished in 1853, had earlier probably served as a synagogue for Münster’s first Jewish community. The Ratsstall, first recorded in 1546 and demolished around 1900, housed the council’s horses during the city’s major horse-breeding and horse-trading activities.
Objects and Commemorative Features
Weapons, Flags, and Civic Objects
The holdings include two surviving suits of armour, three execution swords measuring 82–86 centimetres, eight broadswords with blades about 1.20 metres long, ten pole weapons, a 2.49-metre giant sword with a 1.45-metre blade averaging 15 centimetres in width, and surviving parts of firearms. The giant sword was probably made in the first half of the seventeenth century, although the purpose of the monumental weapons remains uncertain.
Other surviving or documented objects include two Peace flags from 1648, the flag used for the installation of Prince-Bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg in 1678, civic cavalry standards consecrated in 1763, three district flags from 1780–1781, three Civic Guard flags from 1815, three pieces of civic silver, a probable 1545 doorkeeper’s staff measuring 128.4 centimetres, a gilded-silver minstrel’s emblem dated 1606, a late-seventeenth-century coin cup, and 26 seat cushions made in two groups around 1537 and 1553.
Golden Cockerel and Other Objects
The Peace Hall displays the Golden Cockerel, a gilded-silver drinking vessel approximately the capacity of an ordinary wine bottle. Its date is uncertain, with proposed dates of 1600 and 1621. A tradition connects it with the siege by Christoph Bernhard von Galen, although that story conflicts with the proposed manufacturing dates.
The hall or town-hall collection also included a sixteenth-century torture collar with an iron face mask measuring 15 by 14 centimetres. Its interior has eight front spikes measuring 1.6 centimetres and six rear spikes measuring 2 centimetres. Other objects include the disputed slipper dated 1620–1640 and a hand mounted on an oak box from the second half of the sixteenth century. The hand has been interpreted both as the severed hand of a punished forger and, following forensic analysis, as a surgically removed body part retained as evidence in an unresolved case.
Memorial Stones and Courtyard Sculpture
A stone from the Frauenkirche in Dresden was installed in the entrance hall in May 2005 as a sign of gratitude for sixty years of peace in Europe. A stone from Münster’s destroyed Poor Clares’ convent was visibly incorporated into the rebuilt Frauenkirche.
Eduardo Chillida’s 1993 sculpture Tolerance through Dialogue stands in the courtyard. It consists of two large hollowed steel benches facing one another. The work contrasts solid material with emptiness, heaviness with lightness, and openness with enclosure.
