Town Hall (Poznan)

Poznan City Hall

The town hall after its renovation in 1910.

The two billy goats on the town hall clock

The town hall in Poznan was originally a building of the City Council on the Poznan Old Market . It was completed in the Renaissance style in 1555 by Giovanni Battista di Quadro . Today it is one of the most valuable architectural monuments of the Renaissance in Central Europe. Since 1954 it has been a museum for the history of the city.

history

The oldest mention of the town hall in Poznan comes from the year 1310. The first town hall building was probably erected shortly after the town was founded in 1253 . In a few centuries the city became one of the most important trading centers in Poland and could therefore afford to commission the Ticino architect Giovanni Battista di Quadro from Lugano with the renovation of the town hall . In the years 1550–1567 the town hall was rebuilt by him in the Renaissance style. It was raised by one floor, the roof was covered on all sides with parapets and the facade was decorated with a three-storey loggia . This makes it one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings north of the Alps.

At the beginning of the 20th century the building was renovated. Until the end of the Second World War , the New Town Hall , built at the end of the 19th century, stood next to it .

After the end of the Second World War, the building was rebuilt together with all the heavily damaged buildings in the Old Market. Today it serves as the city's museum. A tourist attraction is the clockwork on the facade of the town hall, where two billy goats appear every day at twelve o'clock and bump into each other to the beat of the hour.