Infrastructure as monument
A reservoir treated as a temple with columns and sculpture โ nineteenth-century thinking.
Rudolf Stricker โ CC BY-SA 2.0 de ยท Flocci Nivis โ CC BY 4.0 ยท Achim Lammerts (Syntaxys) โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Achim Lammerts (Syntaxys) โ CC BY-SA 4.0
Clearly yes, because it costs you nothing: minutes on foot from the main station and free. If you have an hour between trains this is the best way to spend it in Mannheim. On a warm evening with the fountains lit it is worth more.
No โ it is a utility structure not open to visitors and has no viewing platform. What you see is the exterior from the square, which is the point: the value is entirely in the architectural ensemble rather than in height.
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A late nineteenth-century water tower in the heart of Mannheim, the city's official emblem and its best-known point. The tower itself is a purely functional structure โ a water reservoir โ but it was treated as a monument: a circular sandstone mass sixty metres high, with columns, sculpture and ornament that make it look like a temple rather than a utility. This was how European cities thought at the time: infrastructure ought to be magnificent. What surrounds it matters more: Friedrichsplatz was designed entirely around the tower, with water basins, fountains, stairways and curved art nouveau buildings enclosing it. The whole ensemble was conceived as one piece, and it is among the most complete squares of its period in Germany. The space is public, free and always open, and the tower is not entered. The fountains run in the warm season and are lit at night, which is the best time to see them. It stands minutes from Mannheim's main railway station, so it is easy to add to any passage through the city.
A reservoir treated as a temple with columns and sculpture โ nineteenth-century thinking.
Friedrichsplatz was designed whole around the tower โ among Germany's most complete of its period.
Lit basins and fountains in the evening change the scene entirely.
Friedrichsplatz, Mannheim, about 20 km from Heidelberg