Market Square (Markt)
About This Site
The market square is where Weimar does its ordinary business, and always has: a working market place with a Renaissance front on one side, a Neo-Gothic town hall on the other, and the two houses in which Cranach and Bach lived standing a few doors apart.
Fire and beer: the square in the chronicle, 1424–1433
The town's chronicle mentions this ground first in connection with disaster and regulation. A fire in 1424 took much of the houses along with the castle, the town church and the town hall. Nine years later the council issued its own brewing ordinance: hops and malt in the beer, nothing else. That is the medieval market square — a place where things burned down and were governed in detail.
A conversation between two centuries, 1547–1841
The east side is early Renaissance: the Cranach house of 1547–49, where the painter spent his last year, and beside it the Stadthaus, which the city calls a splendid building in the same style and which holds the tourist information today. Facing them across the square stands the town hall, the Neo-Gothic version put up in 1841. Nearly three centuries of taste, looking at each other across a market.
Two famous addresses, 1553
Cranach the Elder died in the Cranach house on this square in October 1553. A century and a half later the Bach family lived at Markt 16, and their first six children were born there, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel among them. Neither house is a museum, which is the ordinary Weimar experience: the plaque is on a building people still live and work in.
Still a market
This is not a preserved square. The weekly market runs six days, and the seasonal ones take the same ground through the year — the Easter and spring markets, the autumn and pottery and flower markets, and the Weimarer Weihnacht in December. The square is used for what it was laid out for.
Questions visitors ask
- What's on the market square?
- A working market place with a Renaissance front on the east side — the Cranach house of 1547–49 and the Stadthaus beside it — and a Neo-Gothic town hall from 1841 facing them.
- What happened here in 1424?
- A fire took much of the houses along with the castle, the town church and the town hall — the town's chronicle mentions this square first in connection with disaster. Nine years later the council issued its own brewing ordinance: hops and malt in the beer, nothing else.
- Who lived here?
- Lucas Cranach the Elder died in the Cranach house on this square in October 1553. A century and a half later the Bach family lived at Markt 16, where their first six children were born, including Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel. Neither house is a museum.
- Is it still used as a market?
- Yes — the weekly market runs six days, and the seasonal markets take the same ground through the year: Easter and spring markets, autumn, pottery and flower markets, and the Weimarer Weihnacht in December.
- Is there an admission fee?
- No — it's a public square, open at all times.
Connected Historical Figures
painter • printmaker
He spent his last year on this square, in the house of his daughter Barbara — the Cranachhaus — from October 1552 until his death on 16 October 1553.
composer • musician • organist
The Bach family lived at Markt 16 during the Weimar years; their first six children were born on this square.
Visit Information
Free — it is a public square.
Open at all times; the market days and festival dates are the ones the city publishes for each market.
Markt, 99423 Weimar
50.9792, 11.3304
Stay and eat nearby
Where to stay
Markt 19, 99423 Weimar
The hotel is one of the buildings that make the square — Markt 19, on its eastern side.
Where to eat
Markt 19, Weimar
The restaurant is in the hotel on the eastern side of the square, at Markt 19.
Markt 20, Weimar
The house is one of the buildings that make the square — Markt 20, on its eastern side.
Events held here
Events
Daily at 10:00 and 14:00, about two hours
Daily at 11:00, about one hour
Monday to Saturday, all year round
The weekend before Easter, every year
One Sunday in late May
Two days in May
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
The square carries the medieval town's business: the fire of 1424 and the council's brewing ordinance of 1433 are the chronicle's first entries about it.
For six centuries Weimar is a small Thuringian town with a castle, a market and a church, overshadowed by its bigger neighbours. What the Middle Ages leave here is not a monument but a ground plan — and, after the town burns in 1424, the two buildings everything later happens around.
The Renaissance houses on the east side went up in 1547–49, the years the Ernestine court settled in Weimar.
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
One fire took much of the houses, the castle, the town church and the town hall — and Weimar's oldest surviving buildings are what replaced them.
The houses the chronicle lists were the ones around this square.
A defeated elector picked the town that was left to him, and Weimar stopped being provincial.
The square the court's painter lived on.
Weimar's 1989 does not run to the familiar national calendar. It began at a rigged-looking election count in May, gathered in the churches in October, and reached the street late — on Tuesdays.
One of the places the city names in its own account of 1989.