Old City Hall: Leipzig’s Historic Town Hall in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Electorate of Saxony, Holy Roman Empire, Margraviate of Meissen
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page10 sections
History
Old City Hall is a historic town hall in Leipzig, Germany, whose present exterior largely reflects the Saxon Renaissance rebuilding of 1556–1557. Standing on the east side of the Markt, with the Naschmarkt behind it, the building developed from a medieval complex that became the center of Leipzig’s municipal administration and civic life.
Medieval origins and expansion
In 1341, Margrave Frederick II of Meissen granted Leipzig’s cloth merchants a representative building south of the market. The structure probably arose in the late thirteenth century in Romanesque style and occupied approximately the site and area of the present council chamber. The city council may already have carried out its functions there, while a Leipzig town hall is first documented in 1360.
As Leipzig expanded and the council assumed wider responsibilities, additions were made on the north side of the cloth hall. Two new buildings rose on foundations belonging to earlier structures, creating an approximately three-degree bend in the long facade. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the town hall complex had been linked with two more buildings north of the present passage. A new council chamber was completed in December 1467, a stair tower was first documented in 1476, and the cloth merchants moved into their own building in 1482. A concealed mezzanine chamber was added in 1483.
A larger rebuilding was proposed in 1498, when Leipzig’s trade was flourishing, but the city could not finance the project. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the town hall had instead been widened by approximately four metres toward the Naschmarkt. Its roof was enlarged and raised as part of this transformation.
The Saxon Renaissance rebuilding
Leipzig mayor, merchant, and builder Hieronymus Lotter directed the principal rebuilding in 1556–1557. The work gave the town hall most of its present exterior form in the Saxon Renaissance style, a regional expression of the European Renaissance that revived classical architectural forms. Paul Speck served as the first construction supervisor and probably designed the work. After his death in early 1557, Paul Widemann continued the project, with the city master mason Sittich Pfretzschner also taking part.
Paintings of Saxon princes by Hans Krell had been installed in the ceremonial hall and council chamber since 1553, and the series was later enlarged. A circumferential inscription beneath the upper storey records that construction began in March 1556 and ended in November of that year under Augustus, Elector of Saxony. It praises God and also records a renovation carried out under John George II in 1672.
Municipal use and later change
From the late sixteenth century, the building housed the councillors as well as the Upper Court, the Court of Aldermen, the city magistrate, and the council archives. Prison cells occupied the cellar. Its approximately 40-metre ceremonial hall served for a long period as Leipzig’s largest venue for public receptions and festivities.
During the eighteenth century, proposals were made to raise the entire building, but only the tower was increased, by 2.80 metres, under master builder Christian Döring. By the late nineteenth century, the town hall had become too small for Leipzig’s growing population. Demolition, rebuilding, and sale of the site for commercial development were debated for an extended period.
The New Town Hall began in 1899 on the site of the former Pleißenburg. In 1905, preservation of the Old Town Hall was secured by the tie-breaking vote of Johannes Junck, chairman of the city’s municipal representative assembly. The mayor and municipal administration then moved to the New Town Hall, and the older building was adapted for the Leipzig City History Museum.
Restoration and conversion for museum use took place from 1906 to 1909 under city building councillor Otto Wilhelm Scharenberg. Much of the present exterior reflects those alterations. On 4 December 1943, an air raid on Leipzig severely damaged the building and burned out its entire roof structure. An iron-supported concrete ceiling installed during the early twentieth-century work prevented the fire from spreading to the historic rooms on the first floor. Most of the museum collection had already been evacuated and survived. Reconstruction took place from 1946 to 1950, and the museum reopened in the building in 1952 after smaller exhibitions had been held there from 1945.
Extensive renovation and conversion work caused a prolonged closure from 1988 to 1990. The facade, including the faces of both clocks, was extensively renovated from early 2017 to 2018. On 18 September 2024, Leipzig’s city council held its constituent session in the ceremonial hall for the first time since 1905.
A full-size replica was built for the Saxon-Thuringian Industrial and Commercial Exhibition in Leipzig in 1897. It represented the building’s 1497 form rather than the version created by Lotter’s rebuilding in 1556.
Remains
Old City Hall is a two-storey, elongated building measuring approximately 93.2 metres along the Markt and 20.6 metres in width. Its town-hall tower reaches about 41 metres. The sections on either side of the passage measure approximately 35.8 metres on the left and 57.4 metres on the right. A steep roof with a low eaves line dominates the relatively narrow body, while six dormer gables face the Markt and seven face the Naschmarkt. Their horizontal connecting lines visually organize the long elevations. High stepped gables and strong horizontal cornices emphasize the narrow end facades.
Exterior layout and details
An octagonal stair tower interrupts the Markt elevation beside the main portal. The portal and the passage beneath the tower connect the Markt with the Naschmarkt. The building uses warm-toned Rochlitz porphyry, a durable reddish stone from Saxony, together with beige or ocher plaster. A ground-floor arcade of Rochlitz porphyry runs along the Markt side and continues onto the narrow gable ends. It replaced wooden sales booths during the 1906–1909 alterations.
The main portal is framed by two Ionic columns, whose capitals have scroll-shaped forms, and by carved “gaff heads” said to represent the master builders. Two of the heads are sometimes identified as portraits of Lotter and Widemann, while another has been questioningly associated with Scharenberg. Stone box oriels, ornamental fountains, decorated keystones, commemorative plaques, and a biforium window also contribute to the exterior. The biforium, a window divided into two openings by a central column, dates to 1230 and came from a predecessor building, probably a residential tower.
The front and rear elevations contain pronounced asymmetries that largely derive from the earlier buildings and foundations incorporated into the 1556–1557 reconstruction. The facade is approximately proportioned according to the golden ratio, a relationship in which the larger part relates to the whole as the smaller part relates to the larger. Here, the relevant division is determined by the center of the main portal and passage rather than by the tower, which is offset to one side.
The two fountains known as “Bathing Boy” and “Bathing Girl” were installed during the 1906–1909 conversion. One stands in a niche inside the passage, while the other is positioned in front of the passage on the Naschmarkt side.
Interior spaces and collections
Ceremonial and civic rooms
The principal interior spaces include the approximately 40-metre ceremonial hall, the council chamber, a late-Baroque landscape room, the treasury, and the concealed mezzanine chamber known as the Aerar. The Aerar is a treasury or treasure chamber placed within a mezzanine-like secret space. The ceremonial hall and council chamber retain the paintings of Saxon princes begun by Hans Krell in 1553 and subsequently supplemented.
Portrait, model, and inscription
The building contains the only authentic portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach, painted by Elias Gottlob Haussmann. Bach signed his employment certificate as cantor of St. Thomas Church in the council chamber in 1723. A scale model of Leipzig made in 1823 by Johann Christoph Merzdorf is also preserved there.
The inscription beneath the upper storey runs around the building for approximately 220 metres. It was painted in 1672 and later refined with brass letters during the early twentieth-century renovations. Its text records the 1556 construction under Augustus, praises God, and notes the 1672 renovation under John George II.
Reconstructed roof and upper structure
The 1943 fire destroyed the roof structure, while the iron-supported concrete ceiling below it survived. This ceiling helped protect the historic first-floor rooms from the fire. The roof and other damaged portions were reconstructed between 1946 and 1950, leaving the building’s principal historic rooms and its long civic interior available for continued museum use.
