Dachau Old town hall

The photograph at the top of the page shows the old town hall. In the photo immediately above, the old town hall is on the left, with the modern new town hall in the middle and on the right, a gray building with a Baroque gable similar to the one on the old town hall.

The pink-colored old town hall, shown in the photograph at the top of this page, is a reconstruction completed in 1936. It replaces the previous town hall which was a 1614 reconstruction of the original town hall that had been on this same spot since at least 1486. The Baroque gable is a reproduction of the the one on the previous town hall, built in the years 1614 to 1615.

The gray building on the right in the photo immediately above is called the Lebzelterhaus which means gingerbread maker's house. Four buildings are joined together here with no space in between them: starting on the extreme left of the picture, the Zieglerbräu Brewery and Inn, then the old town hall, the modern new town hall and the gingerbread maker's house. This street is on a slope and a small yellow building with blue shutters is set down below the other buildings; this building is currently being used as a photographer's place of business. The edge of a roof that you can see in the right hand corner is the District Administration Building. Note the beautiful hawthorn tree in bloom in front of the gray building. The new town hall was designed by Professor Werner Fauser.

The photograph below shows a close-up of the emblem on the top of the old town hall. In the round window in the center of the picture, you can see a silver spur. A spur has been used in the Dachau town seal since as far back as 1374.

German towns were traditionally built around a market square which had three obligatory features: the town hall, a magnificent Christian church, and a beautiful fountain. In Dachau's Altstadt (Old town) the town hall is across the street from the parish Church of St. Jakob and there is a beautiful red marble fountain in front of it, so the town square meets all the requirements for a typical German town.

The red marble fountain in front of the old town hall was designed in 1915 by a Dachau artist named Ignatius Taschner, who was a good friend of Ludwig Thoma, Dachau's first lawyer and a famous writer. The old town fountain, which dates back to 1788, was moved to the corner of Weiningerstrasse and Konrad-Adenauer-Strasse.

Passageway through new town hall

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