Old Town Hall (Hanover)

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Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus) in Hanover is the city’s first town hall and its oldest secular building. It stands at Köbelingerstraße 4, near the Market Church. Construction began in 1410, and before that the city council met in various places around the city. Over the years the building was enlarged and changed many times. The ground floor became the basement due to medieval contamination. In 1844 the wings were renovated, and the apothecary wing (a 16th‑century half‑timbered building) was replaced by a municipal court in Renaissance style by August Heinrich Andreae; this new section was called the Doge’s Palace and now houses the registry office. From 1877 to 1891, Conrad Wilhelm Hase restored the hall to its original Hanoverian look and added a neo‑Gothic wing in the 1880s along the Karmarschstraße front. The market façade with its Brick Gothic lucarnes is preserved. The complex was damaged in the air raids of 1943 and repaired in 1953 and 1964. In 1999 the courtyard got a glass roof. The city council once met on the first floor in a ballroom, while a ground‑floor room served as a store and later became the Ratskeller (cellar). The city moved to Wangenheim Palace in 1863, and the New Town Hall opened in 1913 to house the administration. Around 1900 market women sold goods from the ground‑floor windows. Today the site includes restaurants and shops. In 2001 a statue toppled in a restaurant, killing a child.