Nassauer Haus

About this place

The last medieval residential tower still standing in Nuremberg, on the corner of Karolinenstrasse directly opposite the church of St Lorenz. Its cellar and ground floor are of red castle sandstone and date from the early thirteenth century, with heavy vaulting; three Gothic storeys of stone were raised on top around fourteen twenty-two, and the whole was finished off around fourteen thirty with battlements and three small corner turrets. Even the name is a dated mistake. The house was only called the Nassauer Haus from the nineteenth century, when it was wrongly connected to King Adolf of Nassau; before that it was known as the Schlüsselfelder foundation house. The Schlüsselfelder family owned it from fifteen eighty-one, and when their line died out in seventeen hundred and nine it passed to their charitable foundation. In the bombing of nineteen forty-five it came off comparatively lightly — only the roof and two of the three turrets were badly damaged — and it was repaired between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty-two. Today the visit is from the outside. The restaurant that occupied the vaulted cellar closed in February two thousand and twenty-four, and the new operator's opening has slipped repeatedly, so there is no public way in at present. A few minutes on the pavement opposite is enough to see how a rich Nuremberg household housed itself six hundred years ago, and then you can cross to the church.