Rathaus

Bremen City Hall stands on the northeastern side of Bremen’s historic market square, beside the Roland statue. Schütting guildhall and Bremen Cathedral stand nearby. Brick Gothic forms meet Weser Renaissance details across this civic landmark, which serves as the seat of Bremen’s Senate President and mayor.

The original fifteenth-century building contained a rectangular, two-storey hall with an oak-pillared ground floor. Merchants and theatre groups once used that space. Around 1400, Gothic construction expressed Bremen’s growing confidence and civic power, while later additions reshaped the building under architect Lüder von Bentheim. Nineteenth-century expansion preceded the New Town Hall, built in the early twentieth century and doubling the original complex.

Protected since 1973, the building joined the UNESCO World Heritage list with the Roland statue in July 2004. Political meetings, banquets, ceremonies and exhibitions still fill its halls and chambers. Below them, the Bremer Ratskeller holds Germany’s oldest wine barrel, made in 1653.