Hamburg's Town Hall Was Built on a Forged Charter
From Charlemagne to the Kitchen Boy: Reading the Hamburg Rathaus
The Hamburg Rathaus is a stone chronicle of the city, and this walk through its façade reads it detail by detail. A copper roof turned turquoise by patina, a Phoenix pulled by four black horses to mark rebirth after the Great Fire of 1842, Charlemagne and Barbarossa flanking the balcony, and 18 emperors in the niches. The sharpest twist: the charter that launched one of the world's great ports was a fake, sealed with a grandson's stamp.
Historians have known this since 1907, but the city celebrates anyway. I find it funny that one of the biggest ports in the world partly owes its start to a clever trick.
- jacquesm
It is interesting to me that a good chunk of Western Europe was already united once before and fell apart again. You only really realize how large the territory he ruled over was when you find out in how many languages they have a localized name for him and that in general the impression was not so much of a conqueror (which he definitely was) but a uniter. And it's well over a thousand years ago.
edit: Oh, another funny thing: To this day there are people trying to trace their family linkage with Charlemagne, or "Karel De Grote" as he's called here.
- rebeccapowell
Just down the road from Hamburg, the town hall in the city state of Bremen replaced its copper roof in 2016.
It was fascinating to see the shiny copper oxidize over a relatively short space of time.
https://www.rathaus.bremen.de/rathausdachsanierung-2016-3196...
- gyanchawdhary
This post brought back some good memories! I lived in hh for 3 years .. quite close to the rathaus in harvestehude .. and used to walk past it all the time on my way to buy cigars at la casa del habano in chilehaus .. its a stunning building, and the pics really dont do justice to just how massive and imposing it is in person ... even more impressive when u think it was built in the late 1800 ..