Cranach House (Markt 11/12)
About This Site
Two identical gabled houses stand on the east side of the market square, and the left one is where Lucas Cranach the Elder died. The city calls it a document of the early Renaissance; it is also not a museum, and the only room a visitor can enter is the theatre under its vaults.
Built for a chancellor, 1547–49
The pair went up in the years the Ernestine court was settling into Weimar, built for the ducal chancellor Christian Brück — who happened to be Lucas Cranach's son-in-law.[1] The city describes the result as a document of the early Renaissance,[2] and on a square that later filled up with plainer buildings it still is: columns, shell niches, round-arched portals, the ornament of a moment when a small residence town suddenly had a court in it.[1]
Cranach's last year, 1552–1553
In 1552 the eighty-year-old painter followed the deposed elector Johann Friedrich to Weimar and moved into number 11, his son-in-law's house.[1] He set up a workshop, took on two pupils in the year before he died, and worked on the three-winged altarpiece for the town church a few streets away.[2] The detail that matters for the altar is that he lived here until his death in October 1553 with his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger[2] — so the man who finished the picture was in the house while it was begun. A visitor standing on the market square is standing between the house and the work.
What is inside today, since 2002
The building itself is private, not a museum; what is open to the public is underneath.[2] The Theater im Gewölbe has played under these cross vaults since 2002, a stage of about a hundred seats whose repertoire is largely Goethe. The Cranach house spends its evenings in the century after Cranach's.
Questions visitors ask
- Why is this house connected to Cranach?
- Lucas Cranach the Elder followed the deposed elector Johann Friedrich to Weimar in 1552 and moved into the left house, his son-in-law Christian Brück's home.[1] He set up a workshop there and lived and worked in it until his death in October 1553.[2]
- Can I visit the house?
- The building itself is private, not a museum — the only room a visitor can enter is the theatre under its vaults.[2] The façade on the market square can be seen at any time.
- When was it built, and for whom?
- 1547–49, for the ducal chancellor Christian Brück, who happened to be Lucas Cranach's son-in-law.[1] The city calls the result a document of the early Renaissance.[2]
- What's the connection to the Weimar altarpiece?
- Cranach worked on the town church's three-winged altarpiece from this house in his last year, and his son Lucas Cranach the Younger lived here with him until his death — so the man who finished the picture was in the house while it was begun.[2]
Sources
- Cranachhaus — Weimar-Lese (Bertuch Verlag Weimar), retrieved 29 August 2026
- Cranachhaus am Markt — Stadt Weimar, retrieved 30 August 2026
Connected Historical Figures
painter • printmaker
He lived and worked in the left house from 1552 until his death in October 1553.
painter • printmaker
The city's account has him living in this house with his father until the elder Cranach's death in October 1553 — the years the Weimar altarpiece was begun.
Visit Information
Tickets are the theatre's own, sold by the Theater im Gewölbe.
The façade on the market square can be seen at any time; the vaults are open when the theatre plays.
Markt 11/12, 99423 Weimar
50.9792, 11.3304
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
The house is the Reformation century built in stone on the market square: a chancellor's Renaissance double house that took in the elector's painter.
For a hundred years Weimar is a Reformation town before it is anything else — and it becomes a capital by accident, because a prince who had lost everything else still had this place. The century leaves the town its market-square gables, an altarpiece the stewards rank among the main works of Reformation painting, and a court that never moved away again.
In Weimar's history
A defeated elector picked the town that was left to him, and Weimar stopped being provincial.
The house Cranach moved into, new that same decade.
Stages and venues
Lucas-Cranach-Haus, Markt 11/12, 99423 Weimar
The theatre plays under the cross vaults of this house, and calls itself Weimar's Klassik-Bühne.
It stands on this square, and a theatre plays in its vaults.