Town Hall (now the Municipal Public Library, Pedagogical Library, Gubin Palace of Culture, »Ratusz« gallery and »Tercet« restaurant)

Historical Monuments

Description

The present Municipal Public Library, Pedagogical Library, Gubin Palace of Culture, art gallery »Ratusz« and restaurant »Tercet« are located in the former building of the town hall and merchant house.

It is a four-storey, L-shaped brick building with a four-sided tower closed with a cupola with a lantern, adjacent to the gothic pinnacle gable on the eastern side. After the modernization works in 1671-1672, the western gable was finished with three-story, stepped volute tides. The southern façade was finished with three extensions in the same theme. In the basement and ground floor, rooms with cross and rib vaults supported on the central flair have been preserved. The façade of the tower is enriched with gothic blinds matching the elements of the eastern gable and a mechanical clock with a chime located slightly above the half of its height.

Historical background

The former Guben town hall is one of the most valuable monuments of the Lubuskie Province. Its history dates back to 1298, when the city received the privilege of building its first town hall. In the second half of the fourteenth century, a small, rectangular building was built with one room on the ground floor, closed with an arcade on the west side. The vaults of cellars and central rooms, now located in the southern part, were additionally topped with gothic vaults 200 years later. In 1502, a slender tower slightly deviating from the vertical was added to the town hall. Between the town hall and the church there were stalls with bread (the so-called bread benches (Ger.: Brotbänke), i.e. a place specially designated for the townspeople to trade bread, from which the city charged the rent. Technical and post-construction condition again in the years 1671-1672 during the reconstruction of the town hall, then the main building itself was extended with a northern, four-storey wing and received a late Renaissance decor, with decorative displays, gables and additional utility and decorative elements on the tower. it survived until the end of World War II, when as a result of war damage it copied the fate of the vast majority of the historic city tissue, becoming a ruin.