Dachau's town gates

Early in its history, Dachau was a walled market town on a low hill with three entrance gates. These three gates were located at the points where the roads from three nearby towns entered Dachau. The road from Augsburg entered Dachau on the west side; the road from Freisinger entered the town on the north side and the road from München (Munich) entered on the south side on the street that is today called the Bergstrasse. After going through the gates, the roads from Augsburg and Freisinger became Augsburgerstrasse and Freisingerstrasse, the main streets in the town of Dachau; these two streets meet at the point where the Münchner gate once stood at the top of the Bergstrasse. The town walls and gates have long since been torn down, but Dachau has preserved this bit of history with markers at the places where the town gates once stood.

Two of the locations of the old town gates have been commemorated with a marker that consists of two posts and a model of the gate house. The photograph above shows the Augsburger Tor which was the town gate for people coming from the town of Augsburg. Notice the cobble-stoned sidewalk in the photograph. All the streets and sidewalks in the old part of town are still paved with cobble stones.

Shown above is a model of the Augsburger Tor suspended between two concrete posts. The photograph below shows the same marker, taken from the other side. In the photograph below, the pink building in the background between the two posts is the Ludwig Thoma house. The white building with the shutters is the former location of the Cafe Belstler, where SS soldiers, from the Training Camp in the concentration camp complex, danced the night away with local girls. Visitors to the Dachau concentration camp, who have seen the gatehouse at the entrance to the prison compound will understand where the Nazis got this idea, after seeing the models of the former Dachau town gates.

The Münchner Tor was at the top of the hill on the Bergstrasse where the road from München enters the town on the south side. The photograph below shows a plaque on a wall near the location of the former Münchner Tor.

In the photograph below, a mural on the side of a building on Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse shows a view of Freisingerstrasse looking south toward the parish Church of St. Jakob. The Freisinger Tor is at the bottom of the painting, showing the gate which once stood on the north side of the old town of Dachau. Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse is the new name for the section of Freisingerstrasse that is part of Old Town.

The next photograph shows a model of the Freisinger Tor which wraps around two sides of one of the posts that represent the former location of the Tor. In the background is a store on Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse, formerly Freisingerstrasse.

Town Fountains

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