Chemnitz has a rare double town hall which consists of the Old Town Hall and the New Town Hall. The Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus) was built at the end of the 15th century and has been redesigned numerous times over the centuries. At the base of the building’s tower is a striking Renaissance portal with half-figures depicting Judith and Lucretia.
The New Town Hall (Neues Rathaus) was built at the beginning of the 20th century according to plans by the city’s official architect Richard Möbius. It ties in perfectly with the Old Town Hall. Since 1978, the carillon has been housed in the tower of the New Town Hall. The façade of the New Town Hall is adorned with the city’s coat of arms and a 5-metre-high statue of Roland. The building’s interior is primarily characterised by the Art Nouveau style, with Max Klinger’s famous mural Arbeit-Wohlstand-Schönheit displayed inside the city council chamber.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.