Fruchtkasten

Fruchtkasten stands at Schillerplatz in Stuttgart as a late Gothic stone building beside the Stiftskirche and Prinzenbau. Its stone exterior belongs to one of the city’s oldest surviving structures. At the square’s southwest corner, its architecture anchors Stuttgart’s historic centre.

The building first appears in records from 1393 as a princely wine press behind the collegiate churchyard. It later served as a granary. In 1596, Duke Friedrich I commissioned Heinrich Schickhardt to reshape the area, removing five metres and creating the Renaissance facade. Severe wartime damage followed, while reconstruction in the 1950s preserved the historic exterior.

Today, the protected monument houses the House of Music within the Landesmuseum Württemberg. Historical instruments fill the collection, including valuable keyboards made from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The ground-floor concert hall gives these instruments a living role through regular performances. Its changing uses, from wine press to granary, archive and museum, remain visible in the building’s long story.