This colonnade ran the whole length of the
square, at the end of which stood the Marienkirche, a brick church of
the fourteenth century. Continuing my walk, I found myself in a
market-place, where awaited me one of those sights which repay the
traveler for much fatigue: a public building of a new, unforeseen,
original aspect, the old Stadthaus in which was formerly the Hanse hall,
rose suddenly before me.
It occupies two sides of the square. Imagine, in front of the
Marienkirche, whose spires and roof of oxydized copper rise above it, a
lofty brick facade, blackened by time, bristling with three bell-towers
with pointed copper-covered roofs, having two great empty rose-windows,
and emblazoned with escutcheons inscribed in the trefoils of its ogives,
double-headed black eagles on a gold field, and shields, half gules,
half argent, ranged alternately, and executed in the most elaborate
fashion of heraldry.
To this facade is joined a palazzino of the Renaissance, in stone and of
an entirely different style, its tint of grayish-white marvelously
relieved by the dark-red background of old brick-work. This building,
with its three gables, its fluted Ionic columns, its caryatides, or
rather its Atlases (for they are human figures), its semicircular
window, its niches curved like a shell, its arcades ornamented with
figures, its basement of diamond-shaped stones, produces what I may call
an architectural discord that is most unexpected and charming.
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