Zeughaus

On the eastern edge of Ulm's old town, an ensemble of stone, plaster and memory spreads out before you. The Zeughaus was the arsenal of the Free Imperial City of Ulm. Its size alone measures the wealth and pride of a city grown rich on trade.

Everything the defence demanded lay stored here: cannons, shot of stone and iron, grenades, bombs, sulphur and saltpetre for the powder. The complex kept growing, with extensions around 1522, 1596 and 1616 and the Lion Building added in 1667. In wartime it even doubled as the mint, striking the square Ulmer Gulden of 1704. Models of fortifications, bridges, mills and machines filled its rooms, a technical archive of the city's skills. The square in front belonged to the townspeople, who gathered there for the musters of the fourteenth citizen company. There, in August 1794, men and women of Ulm stopped imperial troops from carting five cannons off to the Rhine. Their protest put demands for civil rights and equal citizenship into words for the first time.

The Second World War caught up with the Renaissance building, and two storeys of its southern gable are all that survive. Restorers in the seventies followed a deliberate plan: rebuild part of what was lost, leave the war damage in plain sight. The Lion Building survived the bombs best, its sgraffito plasterwork intact, and its columned hall hosts changing exhibitions. The New Zeughaus adds portals with Baroque and Renaissance motifs and plasterwork that imitates ashlar around faceted window stones. The ensemble rewards an unhurried outside stroll and a camera, in rain as in sunshine. Through the glazed front of the 1597 Riding Building, the ruins stare straight back at you.