About this place
Running from the Marktplatz down toward the Weser, Böttcherstraße once belonged to the coopers who hammered barrels for Hanseatic merchants. In the early twentieth century the coffee merchant Ludwig Roselius, inventor of the world's first decaffeinated coffee and founder of Kaffee HAG, bought up the old warehouses and set out to transform the humble lane into a total work of art. Between 1922 and 1931 he charged the sculptor and architect Bernhard Hoetger, together with the architects Alfred Runge and Eduard Scotland, with reshaping the street into an ensemble of Brick Expressionism. The result is a fairy-tale corridor of curving walls, sculpted portals, museums and craft workshops, crowned by a carillon of Meissen porcelain bells. Beautiful, strange and heavy with the shadows of the Nazi era, Böttcherstraße remains one of Bremen's most beloved and most debated landmarks.
Key facts
- 100 meters — The entire fairy-tale street runs barely this far, linking the Marktplatz to the Weser
- 30 bells — Meissen porcelain bells form the carillon on the Glockenspiel House, chiming three times a day
- 1937 year — The Nazi regime placed the street under protection as a warning example of so-called degenerate art
📍 Böttcherstraße 6, 28195, Bremen