Historisches Rathaus

This is the historic town hall of a German town, built in 1876 in the Neo-Renaissance manner of the nineteenth century. The style took the forms of the Renaissance up again, and the house carries them from its arcades to the roofline.

At the bottom you meet the arcades: round arches standing in a row. Many of the windows higher up close under a round arch as well. Horizontal bands split the storeys, and grooves run through the wall on the ground floor and at the corners. Up on the roof, pushed a little to one side, sits a small dark turret. A domed cap and a weather vane crown it, and a bell shows through one of its openings. In German it is a Dachreiter, a roof rider: it perches up there like a rider on a horse.

The house stopped serving as the town hall after a conversion and renovation in 1982. Today the rooms hold a ceremonial hall and the town library. The facade sets a puzzle too: the side beneath the turret carries the second of four counting tasks. You count the rows of windows stacked from the arcades up to just under the roof, bottom row included. The four numbers, added together, should match the stations on an art trail to works by Georg Brenninger.