To the Roman Emperor (Mainz)
The House of the Roman Emperor , formerly Zum Marienberg , is a Renaissance building in Mainz . It was the first larger new building in Mainz, which was destroyed by the Thirty Years' War , and served as a model for other subsequent magnificent buildings of the Kurmainz nobility. Today, part of the building houses the Gutenberg Museum and the official residence of the Mainz town clerk .
17th century
The historic building was built for the merchant, electoral councilor and rent master Edmund Rokoch in the second half of the 17th century. The late Renaissance building with its elaborate facade was the richest town house in the city and marks the beginning of the reconstruction of the city, which was destroyed and depopulated as a result of the war. In 1653 the western part of the building was first built in the tradition of narrow bourgeois gabled houses.
From 1657, this house was supplemented by a gabled house of the same design on the eastern part of today's property and finally completed by the central building connecting the two parts of the building, the so-called Zum Marienberg private palace .
Above the passage is the portal figure of a Roman emperor standing next to cannon balls. It is supposed to represent Charles V after the Turkish Wars.
18th century
The building was adorned with plastic facade decoration and served from 1742 under the new name Zum Roman Kaiser , which is still used today, as a hotel, in which Mozart , Voltaire and Goethe stayed as guests.
The figure in armor above the entrance presumably represents Emperor Charles VI .
The former gate entrance is spanned by a baroque vaulted ceiling from 1685, which shows a wealth of motifs and is considered the best ceiling stucco of its time in Mainz. In October 2009 the stucco decoration suffered water damage, so that parts of the stucco fell off; meanwhile the damage has been repaired. In the passageway is Gutenberg's sandstone monument by Joseph Scholl .
As a splendid town house, the building had a decisive influence on the architecture of Mainz. It was a model for the Episcopal Palace and the Schönborn Court .
20th century
Since 1930 the building has housed the Gutenberg Museum, which burned down completely in the Second World War . In 1960/61 the building was reconstructed and since 1962 has served as a museum for the art of printing together with a new building built by the architect Rainer Schell . The specialist library, the restoration department and administration of the museum as well as the Gutenberg Society are housed here.
In 2005, the “building management company Mainz” began an urgently needed facade renovation with financial support from the Mainz Monument Network , the German Foundation for Monument Protection and the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage of Rhineland-Palatinate. It cost around 460,000 euros and ended in 2009.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Short flash video on the damage in the stucco of the doorway, on K3 television ( memento of the original from March 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The emperor's new clothes
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: project page of the building management company Mainz
Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 58 ″ N , 8 ° 16 ′ 32 ″ E