Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) Munich

The New Town Hall (Neues Rathaus in German) is a town hall at the northern part of Marienplatz in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It hosts the city government including the city council, offices of the mayors and part of the administration. In 1874 the municipality had left the Old Town Hall for its new domicile. The decision to constructed a new building came due to the lack of space in the Old Town Hall and the small Town Hall on Petersbergl (destroyed in 1944). In memory of the bourgeois high season during the Gothic period, the choice fell upon a neo-gothic design, which allowed an implement an independent architectural accent in contrast to the buildings of the royal family. The New Town Hall is the home of the Mayor and the city council, which has its conference room here. At the same time, the council factions and small parts of the city administration are accommodated in the New Town Hall. The richly decorated, neo-gothic library hall was built to accommodate the Council's legal library and is still a publicly available legal library under the administration of the Munich City Library. At the top of the 85-meter-high (255 feet) tower on the city hall is an observation deck that can be accessed with an elevator and offers a grandiose view of the roofs of the city, even as far as the Alps in nice weather. In the generous and richly painted cellar vault of the Neues Rathaus is the Ratskeller, a traditional Munich restaurant since 1867.