Red Town Hall in Szczecin

The Red Town Hall, also called the New Town Hall (German: Neues Rathaus), is a former city town hall standing on Batory Square. The neo-Gothic brick building was built in 1875-1879 and has kept its red brick façade, from which its popular name comes. Today it is a monument entered in the register, and inside it houses the offices of state institutions, so it is viewed mainly from the outside.

Construction and design

The city authorities planned to build a new town hall as early as 1856, but the foundation stone was laid only on 2 November 1875. Work was finished on 10 January 1879. The design was made by the Szczecin councillor Konrad Kruhl, who drew on the developed phase of the Gothic. The city administration worked here until 1945.

What can be seen on the façade

The building stands on an embankment, on a rectangular plan with two projections at the corners and one in the middle on the Batory Square side. On the east side a terrace and a double flight of steps were designed, meant to emphasise the prestigious character of the building. The west façade is just as imposing: the entrance is preceded by an arcaded portico with figural sculptures. In niches above the piers stand allegorical figures representing Industry, Agriculture, Seafaring and Knowledge, that is the four sources of Szczecin's power. Each is 120 cm high, and they were made by Emil Steiner in 1869.

The façade is decorated with balconies, small turrets and coats of arms of Szczecin with an acanthus tendril in the crowns of the windows. In 1939, when the attic was adapted into flats, the sharp pinnacles crowning the pilaster strips were replaced with low posts. Even so, the building has kept a light, slender character.

Interior and history after the war

According to the Wikipedia entry, the interior is reached by a staircase with balusters in the form of openwork pointed-arch arcades, and the corridor and the former café room have cross-ribbed vaults. In the staircase the coat of arms of Szczecin from 1660, moved from the old town hall, has been set into the wall. At the end of the Second World War the building was set on fire and destroyed, and it was rebuilt in the 1960s. The façades were renovated in 2008-2014, and in 2015 the main hall with the staircase was restored.

Today the building is the seat of, among others, the Maritime Office, which manages the building, the Inland Navigation Office and other institutions, and in the lower part there is a business club. Whether you can go inside has to be agreed with the building's manager.

Nearby

The town hall stands in the city centre, a few hundred metres from the Old Town Hall.

Nearby, at a distance of about 100 to 700 metres, are also the Castle of the Pomeranian Dukes and the New Synagogue.

Practical information

• Address: plac Stefana Batorego 4, Szczecin.
• The building is entered in the heritage register (numbers A-1224 of 1993 and A-825 of 2011).
• Institutional offices operate in the building, so it is worth checking the possibility of entering the hall or the staircase before a visit to the Maritime Office.