Wissembourg Town Hall (french: Mairie de Wissembourg, Hôtel de ville de Wissembourg) is a

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

city hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

in Wissembourg, a small town at the northern edge of the

Bas-Rhin Bas-Rhin (; Alsatian: ''Unterelsàss'', ' or '; traditional german: links=no, Niederrhein; en, Lower Rhine) is a department in Alsace which is a part of the Grand Est super-region of France. The name means 'Lower Rhine', referring to its low ...

department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

of France, close to the German state of

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

. It is classified as a ''

Monument historique ''Monument historique'' () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which National Heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a coll ...

'' by the French Ministry of Culture since 1932.

History

The new city hall was designed by the architect Joseph Massol in order to replace the

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

town hall (recorded in 1396) that had been burned down on 25 January 1677 by French troops (q. v.

History of Alsace The History of Alsace begins when the area was inhabited by nomadic hunters in paleolithic times. Later, control of Alsace shifted among competing European powers, including most recently the Holy Roman Empire and Germany, on the one hand, and Fran ...

). The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 26 June 1741, and the inauguration took place eleven years later, on 27 June 1752. Depending on the sources, the town hall has been entirely renovated from 2009 until 2011, or from 2010 until 2012. Previous restorations had taken place in 1826, 1937 and 1959.

Description

The ''

Louis Quinze The Louis XV style or ''Louis Quinze'' (, ) is a style of architecture and decorative arts which appeared during the reign of Louis XV. From 1710 until about 1730, a period known as the Régence, it was largely an extension of the Louis XIV style ...

'' town hall of Wissembourg is built in pink

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

. The three floors below the roof are of decreasing height: the ground floor is almost twice as high as the first floor, which is in turn almost twice as high as the second floor (see infobox picture and first picture below). Its

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...

features an

avant-corps An ''avant-corps'' ( it, avancorpo or , plural , german: Risalit, pl, ryzalit), a French term literally meaning "fore-body", is a part of a building, such as a porch or pavilion, that juts out from the ''corps de logis'', often taller than othe ...

containing the main portal, a balcony, and a

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

, and is crowned with a clock tower surmounted by a ridge turret. The right side of the façade also features a

sundial A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat ...

. The whole is decorated with mascarons and other

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...

s. The original hands of the

clock face A clock face is the part of an analog clock (or watch) that displays time through the use of a flat dial with reference marks, and revolving pointers turning on concentric shafts at the center, called hands. In its most basic, globally recogni ...

now belong to the collections of the municipal museum ''musée Westercamp''. The inscriptions on the façade read ''ANNO MDCCXLI'' ("the year 1741") and ''REGNLUDXVEXANTIQUOCINERESURREXI'' ("under the reign of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

, I resurrected from ancient ashes").

Gallery

Hôtel de ville Wissembourg, Bas-Rhin, Alsace.jpg, Frontal view of the façade Wissembourg HôtelVille 03.JPG, Tower with clock and ridge turret Wissembourg HôtelVille 06.JPG,

Pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedimen ...

of the façade Wissembourg HôtelVille 18.JPG, Staircase Wissembourg HôtelVille 23.JPG, Wedding hall Wissembourg HôtelVille 24.JPG, Wedding hall (opposite side)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wissembourg Monuments historiques of Bas-Rhin Buildings and structures completed in 1752 City and town halls in France Baroque buildings in France 18th-century architecture in France