Town Hall (Tartu)

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Tartu Town Hall

The Town Hall of Tartu ( Estonian Tartu Raekoda ) is one of the landmarks of the second largest city of Estonia .

history

The town hall of the university town of Tartu (German Dorpat ) is located in the center of the largest city in South Estonia at the entrance to Toompea. It is the third town hall in the same place in the more than eight hundred year history of the Hanseatic city . The previous building from 1693 collapsed in 1726 after being badly damaged in the Northern War . The devastating fire in the old town in 1775 gave rise to both the need and the opportunity to erect a new council building.

Rostock architect Johann Heinrich Bartholomäus Walther designed the new representative council building . The Dutch early classicism served him as a model. The town hall was built on a foundation made of alder wood . The building was officially inaugurated in 1786 and finally completed in 1789.

description

Plastic "The Kissing Students"
Elevation and plan of the town hall ( Brotze )

The building consists of a basement, three floors and a hipped roof with a ridge tower . Originally the prison rooms as well as the city treasury and the archive were housed in the basement. The granite stone floor is rustic. The Tartus city scales were in the right wing . A pharmacy has been located there since 1922 .

The city's representative rooms have always been on the two upper floors. They are visually clearly separated from the facade. The two parade floors are decorated with stucco garlands and pilasters . An outer door led to them, which was reached by stairs from the Rathausplatz.

The mayor's courtrooms and reception rooms were on the first floor. The magnificently furnished council chamber dominates the right wing of the second floor. In contrast to the other rooms, which were designed with mixed baroque and early classicist forms, the council chamber has a clear rococo interior. The stucco decoration comes from the workshop of the architect Walter.

The characteristic tower with its historical clock is again very classical. At certain hours a carillon sounds in the clock tower. Today's eighteen bells were made in Karlsruhe .

Town Hall Square

Raekoja Plats 18 and 20, on the left the "Leaning House"

The elongated Town Hall Square ( Town Hall Square , formerly "Big Market") leads from the town hall with a slight slope to the river Emajõgi ( Embach ). The square narrows towards the river.

The town hall square led to the famous Tartu "stone bridge" ( Kivisild ), which was opened in 1784 as the first stone bridge in the Russian Baltic provinces in honor of the Russian tsarina Catherine . The historic building was destroyed by Soviet troops during the Second World War in 1941 and finally by the German Wehrmacht in 1944. A new arch bridge has been connecting the two river banks since 1960.

In front of the town hall is the fountain "The Kissing Students" ( Suudlevad tudengid ) by the Estonian sculptor Mati Karmin (* 1959). It depicts a student couple kissing under an umbrella. The sculpture alludes to the youthful character of the important university town.

There are numerous historical buildings on Town Hall Square, including the Draakon Hotel and Restaurant with its historic gargoyle , the former house of the Great Guild (until 1938 the seat of the Estonian National Bank in Tartu) and the "Leaning House" on Town Hall Square 18.

Since the subsoil of the old town consists of peat soil and all the houses were built on wooden rafts, the house subsided on one side after the groundwater level of the Emajõgi fell. The building used to be a pharmacy where the later Estonian writer Oskar Luts (1887–1953) worked as a provisional . Today it is a branch of the Estonian Art Museum. Exhibitions are devoted to the famous Pallas art school in Tartu .

Web links

Commons : Town Hall (Tartu)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thea Karin: Estonia. Cultural and scenic diversity in a historical borderland between east and west. Cologne 1994 (= DuMont art and landscape guide ) ISBN 3-7701-2614-9 , p. 221f.
  2. ↑ During the German occupation from 1941 to 1944 "Adolf-Hitler-Platz", during the Soviet occupation 1944–1990 "Sowjetplatz"
  3. ↑ visittartu.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.visittartu.com  
  4. ↑ Malle Salupere: Tartu (Dorpat). A thousand year old city of culture. Tartu 2005, ISBN 9949-11-072-6 , p. 75.

Coordinates: 58 ° 22 ′ 48.2 ″  N , 26 ° 43 ′ 18.7 ″  E