Stadthaus
About This Site
The green and white Renaissance house on the east side of the market square, which the city calls a splendid building in the early Renaissance style. It has been a burgher's house, a council house, a market hall, a ballroom and a ruin, and it holds the tourist information today.
Given to the town in 1432
The building came to the town as a gift: in 1432 Landgrave Friedrich the Simple handed it over to Weimar.[1] It had been a burgher's house with a tap room in the cellar[1] — which is the kind of detail that tells you what a fifteenth-century market square was for, and which the Ratskeller in the same cellar has been trading on ever since.
Council house, market stalls, masked balls, 1526–1812
Between 1526 and 1547 it served as the town's council and trading house.[1] Its ground floor carried the stalls of bakers, butchers and shoemakers, and in Goethe's day the rooms upstairs were used for masked balls, concerts and lectures.[1] From 1540 until 1812 a figure known as "Matz von Weimar" sat in the gable.[1] One building, doing the town's civic, commercial and social business in turn.
Destroyed, and rebuilt as a face, 1945–1971
The air raid of 9 February 1945 destroyed it completely.[1] The ruin was cleared in 1956, and between 1968 and 1971 the historic facade was restored with a modern interior behind it.[1] What a visitor admires from the square is therefore a reconstruction of a Renaissance front — a fact that does not make the square any less handsome.
What is inside now
The Ratskeller restaurant in the cellar, the tourist information, a travel agency and several flats.[1] It is the most useful building on the square and the least museum-like: people live in it, eat in it and ask directions in it, which is more or less what it has always been for.
Questions visitors ask
- What is the Stadthaus?
- The green and white Renaissance house on the east side of the market square, given to the town in 1432 by Landgrave Friedrich the Simple.[1] It holds the tourist information today.
- What was it used for over the centuries?
- A burgher's house with a tap room in the cellar, then the town's council and trading house from 1526 to 1547 with market stalls on the ground floor, and later a venue for masked balls, concerts and lectures. A figure called "Matz von Weimar" sat in the gable from 1540 to 1812.[1]
- Is the building original?
- No — the air raid of 9 February 1945 destroyed it completely. The ruin was cleared in 1956, and between 1968 and 1971 the historic facade was restored with a modern interior behind it.[1]
- What's inside today?
- The Ratskeller restaurant in the cellar, the tourist information, a travel agency and several flats — the most-used building on the square and the least museum-like.[1]
Sources
- Weimarer Stadthaus — Wikipedia, retrieved 29 August 2026
Visit Information
Free to enter — it is a working building with a tourist office, a restaurant and flats in it.
The building has no visiting hours of its own; the tourist information and the restaurant keep theirs.
Markt, east side at the corner of Grüner Markt, Weimar
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
A burgher's house of the fifteenth century, handed to the town in 1432.
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.
In Weimar's history
A US Air Force raid aimed at the Gustloff armaments works north of Weimar. Eight of ten bombs fell in one tight cluster, killing concentration camp prisoners at their machines, and the Nationaltheater was destroyed the same day.
The raid of 9 February 1945 destroyed the building completely; only the facade was put back, between 1968 and 1971.