Public Buildings and Civic Pride

The town hall as a building type has a history going §back to ancient Greece and Rome. During the Middle §Ages, however, construction of such buildings was §largely unknown in Europe until the rise of the §European communes in the 12th and 13th centuries. §This volume examines the development of town halls §in three key north German cities of the Hanseatic §League, Lübeck, Bremen and Lüneburg, from their §beginnings up to the outbreak of the Thirty-Years §War. It will show that, though buildings of this §kind represented important symbols of communal civic §pride, the town halls of these German communities, §and many others like them, were relatively modest §structures at first, developing gradually over a §period of centuries, through enlargement or §rebuilding, into grand palatial monuments. Their §architectural transformation reflects not only the §increased wealth and social pretension of the urban §middle classes, but the evolution of civic pride §itself, what the citizenry of the Hanseatic §communes considered worthy of pride, and how these §people viewed themselves in relation to their §aristocratic erstwhile rulers.