Nuremberg Main Market Square

About this place

The commercial heart of Nuremberg since the middle of the fourteenth century, and its origin is a bloody one that should not be skipped over. The city's Jewish quarter stood on this ground until it was destroyed and its inhabitants killed in the pogrom of thirteen forty-nine; the site was then cleared on the order of Emperor Charles the Fourth to make a market square. On the ruins of the burned synagogue the Gothic Frauenkirche was built between thirteen fifty-two and thirteen sixty-two. Two things pull the eye. The first is the Schoener Brunnen, a Gothic spire of nineteen metres made between thirteen eighty-five and thirteen ninety-six and carrying forty painted figures — prophets, evangelists, church fathers, electors and heroes. Most of what you see is copies; the surviving originals are kept in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. The brass ring set into the railing is the one people queue to turn for luck. The second is the clock of fifteen hundred and nine on the church front: at noon the seven prince-electors trundle out, circle the emperor with a bow, and disappear again. In practice the square is quietest in the morning, a fruit and vegetable market runs on most days, and the crush peaks at midday in front of the clock and through December, when the famous Christmas market covers the whole square from the Friday before Advent until the twenty-fourth. The noon show is very short, very small and high up on the wall, so keep your expectations in proportion.