Kramer-Witwen-Wohnung

Kramer-Witwen-Wohnung stands near St. Michaelis Church in Hamburg as one of the last preserved seventeenth-century courtyard housing complexes. Two rows of houses frame a narrow alley, creating a compact view of the city’s historic domestic architecture.

The Krameramt built these homes for widows of small merchants who traded in spices, silk and metal goods. Each house originally held two mirrored apartments, with one widow’s rooms arranged across two floors. A small living room, narrow kitchen, “good room” and bed niche reveal the limited space, while an attic hatch once carried wood and peat from the courtyard. Two pumps supplied water before pipes arrived, and a communal toilet stood at the courtyard’s end.

One apartment received a mid-nineteenth-century interior after restoration, with stencil-painted walls and furnishings reflecting a middle-class household. Its interior window once provided the kitchen’s only daylight.