Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [659]
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Information
Main post office (Mecklenburger Strasse 18-20)
Tourist-Information ( 251 3025; www.wismar.de, with English sections; Am Markt 11; 9am-6pm Mar-Dec, 9am-6pm Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm Sun Jan & Feb)
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Sights
MARKT
Dominating the middle of the Markt is the 1602-built Wasserkunst (waterworks), an ornate, 12-sided well that supplied Wismar’s drinking water until 1897. Today it remains the town’s landmark.
Behind it stands the redbrick Alter Schwede, which dates from 1380 and features a striking step buttress gable facade. Today it houses a restaurant and guesthouse Click here, as well as a copy of one of the so-called ‘Swedish Heads’ (see the boxed text, Click here).
Other gabled houses around the Markt have also been lovingly restored. The large Rathaus at the square’s northern end was built between 1817 and 1819 and today houses the excellent Rathaus Historical Exhibition (adult/concession €1/0.50; 10am-6pm) in its basement. Displays include an original 15th-century Wandmalerei (mural) uncovered by archaeologists in 1985, a glass-covered medieval well, and the Wrangel tomb – the coffin of influential Swedish General Helmut V Wrangel and his wife, with outsized wooden figures carved on top.
CHURCHES
Of the three great redbrick churches that once rose above the rooftops before WWII, only the enormous redbrick St-Nikolai-Kirche (admission by donation; 8am-8pm May-Sep, 10am-6pm Apr & Oct, 11am-4pm Nov-Mar), the largest of its kind in Europe, was left intact. Today it contains a font from its older sister church, the St-Marien-Kirche.
All that remains of the 13th-century St-Marien-Kirche (admission by donation; 10am-8pm Jul & Aug, 10am-6pm Mar-Jun & Sep-Dec, 10am-6pm Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm Sun Jan & Feb) is its great brick steeple (1339), which rises above the city. A multimedia exhibit on medieval church-building techniques is housed in the tower’s base.
The massive red shell of the St-Georgen-Kirche (admission by donation; 10am-8pm Jul & Aug, 10am-6pm Mar-Jun & Sep-Dec, 10am-6pm Mon-Sat, 10am-4pm Sun Jan & Feb) has been extensively renovated for combined use as a church, concert hall and exhibition space and is set to reopen in May 2010. In 1945 a freezing populace was driven to burn what was left of the church’s beautiful wooden statue of St George and the dragon.
FÜRSTENHOF
Between the St-Marien and St-Georgen churches lies the restored Italian Renaissance Fürstenhof (1512–13), now the city courthouse. The facades are slathered in terracotta reliefs depicting episodes from folklore and the town’s history.
HISTORICAL MUSEUM
The town’s historical museum is in the Renaissance Schabbellhaus ( 282 350; www.schabbellhaus.de; Schweinsbrücke 8; adult/concession/child under 18yr €2/1/free; 10am-8pm Tue-Sun May-Oct, to 5pm Nov-Apr) in a former brewery (1571), just south of St-Nikolai-Kirche across the canal. Pride of place goes to one of the original Swedish Heads (see the boxed text, above).
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A SWEDISH HEADS-UP
A ‘Swedish head’ isn’t (in this case, at least) something you need to successfully assemble a flat-pack IKEA bookcase. In Wismar, Swedish Heads refers to two baroque busts of Hercules, which once stood on mooring posts at the harbour entrance.
Semi-comical, with great curling moustaches and wearing lions as hats, and painted in bright colours (one red-and-white, the other yellow-and-blue), the statues are believed to have marked either the beginning of the harbour or the navigable channels within it. It’s thought that before this they were ships’ figureheads.
The original heads were damaged when a Finnish barge rammed them in 1902, at which time