The Bamberg Town Hall
The baroque town hall is the hub of Maxplatz. It was built between 1732 and 1737 by Balthasar Neumann and Justus Heinrich Dientzenhofer and served until 1928 as a clerical seminar of the diocese of Bamberg. The coat of arms of the bishops at the corner of Hauptwachstraße still bears witness to this today. Since the completion of reconstruction work in 1943, during which the building complex was completely renovated according to the plans by Peter Keh and expanded on the back side by two tracts, the building is used as the town hall of the city of Bamberg.
Old St. Martin Church
On Maxplatz, except for a small bronze plaque, there is hardly anything left to remind us that until 1805 the old Martinskirche church, first mentioned in 1250, with its adjoining cemetery was located here. In the course of the secularization the church was demolished and the patronage was transferred to the church of the Jesuit monastery at the Green Market. (the “Green Market”, so-called because of the color of the goods that were sold here: vegetables and fruits).
At the southeastern corner of Maxplatz (today at the corner of Hauptwachstr. where Sparkasse is located), the cemetery wall was bordered by the cemetery chapel of St. Nicholas, which fell victim to the establishment of the seminary in 1737 about 70 years earlier.
With the construction of the underground car park in the 1960s, Maxplatz revealed further secrets. The foundation walls of two predecessor buildings of Old St. Martin were uncovered, which come from a smaller Romanesque church and an older chapel with a rectangular choir dating back to the 9th to 11th centuries.
The Maxplatz today
Between May and September, events such as the internationally renowned street and variety festival “Bamberg zaubert” (Magical Bamberg) regularly take place on the Maxplatz, not always for the residents’ understanding.
The annual highlight, however, is the Christmas Market (Weihnachtsmarkt), which runs through the entire city center during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Here you can also see many Bambergers, who meet under the roofs decorated with lights and fir branches, to drink a Gluhwein (mulled wine) or a punch, protected from snow and rain.
On the pretty wooden stalls can be found the “Zwetschgenmännla”, which are ideal as a souvenir from the Bamberg Christmas Market for friends and relatives. The “Zwetschgenmännchen” is a figure with dried plums as arms and legs, walnut as head and dried dates as corpus. They often represent chimney sweeps, kings or fairy tale characters.
