Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus)
Hanover's oldest secular building, a jewel of glowing red brick Gothic standing shoulder to shoulder with the Marktkirche on the market square. Its elaborate stepped gables and terracotta trim have survived fire, war, and centuries of civic drama.
About this place
Rising from the reconstructed Altstadt on Karmarschstraße, the Altes Rathaus is a rare survivor of medieval Hanover and the southernmost flourish of North German Brick Gothic, a style more at home in the Hanseatic cities of the Baltic coast. Brick cladding was added over an even older stone core in the fourteenth century, and as the city grew wealthy from trade the market wing was rebuilt between 1453 and 1455 with soaring stepped gables, a frieze of miniature towers, and ornate dormer windows glinting with glazed tiles. For centuries this single complex served as council chamber, courtroom, prison, marketplace cellar, and even the site of the city's first pharmacy, opened in 1568. Painstakingly restored to its medieval face by architect Conrad Wilhelm Hase in the late nineteenth century, gutted by bombing in 1943, and rebuilt in the 1950s, it stands today as a layered monument to Hanover's resilience, now housing the city registry office where couples come to marry.
Key facts
- 1410 year — Brickwork began on what is now Hanover's oldest surviving secular building
- 1568 year — Hanover's very first pharmacy opened inside the town hall's Renaissance wing
- 1943 year — Allied bombing gutted the market and Schmiedestraße wings down to their outer walls
📍 Markt, 30159, Hannover