Old Town Hall, Munich: A Late-Gothic Civic Hall and Municipal Landmark
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Bavaria, German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Town Hall
On this page11 sections
History
Old Town Hall, Munich, in Germany, is a late-Gothic civic building on the eastern side of Marienplatz, erected for the city of Munich between 1470 and 1480. It replaced an earlier town hall first recorded in 1310 and became an important setting for municipal government, ceremonies, and expressions of territorial authority.
From Town Gate to Town Hall
The predecessor stood farther west than the present building because Munich’s fortifications then ended at Marienplatz. Even so, it already formed the eastern end of the central square. A large hall was added to the earlier town hall between 1392 and 1394, while the Talburgtor, originally called the Unteres Tor, was converted into the town-hall tower. The gate had belonged to the city’s first wall.
Lightning struck the entire complex in 1460. During the following decade, Jörg von Halsbach, also known as Ganghofer, a late-medieval German master builder, erected the late-Gothic town hall between 1470 and 1480. The new building occupied the line of the former defensive ditch associated with the fortifications of Henry the Lion, a twelfth-century duke of Saxony and Bavaria.
Civic Government and Ceremonial Use
Old Town Hall remained the seat of Munich’s magistrate until 1874. Its rooms supported several aspects of civic life. A city prison called the Fronhaus occupied the basement, a bakery known as the Brothaus stood on the ground floor, and the first floor contained the large council and banqueting hall.
The council hall also served ceremonies connected with territorial rule. The Bavarian Parliament met there in 1677, and Munich’s delegates to the Frankfurt National Assembly were elected there in 1848. The Frankfurt assembly was the first popularly elected all-German parliament and met during the revolutionary movements of that year.
After the municipal administration moved to the New Town Hall in 1874, the older building was used for representational purposes and festive occasions involving the mayor, city council, and city administration. A passage to Tal, including a separate pedestrian passage, was cut through the ground floor after the administrative move. In 1934 and 1935, the passage was extended across the full ground floor in adapted Gothic forms, permanently changing the original ground-floor zone.
Alterations and Political History
The building was repeatedly reshaped. Around 1625, the facade received a Baroque treatment and the tower was given an onion dome, a bulbous dome that curves outward above its base. Augustin Demmel altered the west facade in the Late Baroque style in 1778 and 1779. Arnold Zenetti then remodeled the building between 1861 and 1864 in a neo-Gothic Historicist style.
That nineteenth-century remodeling changed the market-facing gable from its earlier form of only a few large steps to the many-stepped crenellated design visible today. The later design does not correspond to the earlier Gothic gable shown in the Volckmer Plan of 1613. Other neo-Gothic additions included ruler statues and coats of arms that presented Bavarian, dynastic, and municipal associations.
On 9 November 1938, Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech in Old Town Hall that is regarded as a prelude to the November Pogrom, the anti-Jewish violence carried out across Nazi Germany on 9 and 10 November 1938.
War Damage and Reconstruction
An air raid on 25 April 1944 severely damaged the building. The tower was in danger of collapse and was blown up in December of that year. The medieval annex known as the Little Town Hall, which stood south of the tower, was also destroyed during the Second World War.
Reconstruction proceeded in stages. The hall building was rebuilt between 1953 and 1958, with the Ganghofer Hall as its central element, and the banqueting hall was reconstructed in 1977. The facade followed the Gothic original while retaining neo-Gothic features, including the ruler statues and gable treatment. The main window was restored to a taller form.
After prolonged discussion, architect Erwin Schleich reconstructed the 56-metre tower between 1971 and 1974 according to its Gothic form of 1493. Since 1983, the tower has housed the Toy Museum and the collection of caricaturist Ivan Steiger. His daughter, Helena Steiger, has continued the privately run museum since 2020. The Gothic hall now serves Munich’s city council and mayor as a representational space for award ceremonies and other formal occasions.
Remains
Main Civic Building
Layout and Facades
Old Town Hall closes the eastern side of Marienplatz and separates the square from Tal. Its late-Gothic secular architecture follows the line of the former defensive ditch. The building is approximately 56 metres high, and its tower incorporates the former Talburgtor of the first city wall.
The market-facing gable presents the stepped form created during the nineteenth-century neo-Gothic remodeling rather than the earlier Gothic arrangement. The west facade carries a statue of Ludwig the Bavarian, a fourteenth-century Wittelsbach ruler who became Holy Roman Emperor. The east facade carries a statue of Henry the Lion. Both statues were made by Konrad Knoll.
Additional neo-Gothic heraldic elements appear on both sides of the building. The west side bears the coats of arms of Swabia, Bavaria, the Palatinate, and Franconia. The east side displays the arms of the Wittelsbach and Andechs dynasties, the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, and Munich’s oldest city coat of arms. The reconstructed facade also restored the main window to a taller form.
Ganghofer Hall
The first-floor council and banqueting hall, also called the Ganghofer Hall, is the principal interior space. Its late-Gothic ceiling includes a barrel vault, a continuous vaulted ceiling shaped like the lengthwise half of a cylinder. The vault is attributed to Hans Wengler and dated to 1476, while carvings on the wooden ceiling are dated to 1476 and 1477 and attributed to Hans Wenger.
A painted frieze of 99 city coats of arms runs around the springing zone, where the vault begins to curve upward. The frieze is attributed to Ulrich Fuetrer and represented the contemporary ordering and governing powers of the world. Erasmus Grasser decorated the hall with coats of arms of the Wittelsbachs, a major Bavarian ruling dynasty whose heraldry expressed the building’s association with territorial and dynastic authority.
At the center is a double-headed imperial eagle, surrounded by a radiant halo. The two ends of the hall carry symbolic associations with the sun and moon. Grasser also created wooden Morris-dancer sculptures around 1480 for the council hall. The hall now contains copies, while the originals are held by the Munich City Museum.
Reconstructed Tower
The reconstructed tower has an octagonal upper section and follows the Gothic form of 1493. A bronze bell made by the Erdinger bell foundry hangs within it. The bell has a strike note of D1 and is known as the Market Bell. It strikes on the half-hour and hour and is also rung for two minutes shortly before 11 a.m. on working days.
The tower’s present museum preserves the Ivan Steiger collection of historical toys. It includes wooden and tin toys, dolls including Barbie dolls, teddy bears, model railways, steam engines, stuffed animals, dollhouses, and other toys from earlier periods. The collection gives the rebuilt tower a cultural use distinct from its earlier civic and defensive functions.
Little Town Hall
The medieval Little Town Hall was a crooked annex south of the tower. Before its destruction during the Second World War, it had been remodeled in neo-Gothic style and featured decorated gables and chimneys. Its place in the complex reflected the gradual expansion and alteration of the town-hall group around the former city gate.
