Landmark · City Center
Roter Turm (Red Tower)
The Roter Turm (Red Tower) is the oldest building in Chemnitz and a stone witness to a time when the city was still surrounded by a wall. Its origins reach back to the 12th century, when it probably served as a defensive and watchtower of the town fortifications. Over the centuries the massive round tower was rebuilt several times and even used as a prison for a while, its thick walls defying fires, wars and the changing city around it.
Today the tower stands like a solitary monument in the middle of one of the most modern downtowns in Saxony, right beside the Galerie Roter Turm and the glass shopping center that bears its name. This contrast between rough rubble masonry and gleaming postwar and post-reunification architecture is typical of Chemnitz, a city heavily destroyed in the Second World War and largely rebuilt afterward. The tower links the few surviving historic fragments with the city's self-confident claim to be a city of modernism.
Anyone strolling along the central boulevard today can hardly miss the Red Tower, as it marks the heart of the pedestrian zone between the market square and Bahnhofstraße. Department stores, cafés and busy shopping streets line the area, so history and everyday life meet here in the tightest of spaces. For a city walk the tower is an ideal orientation point and a popular photo subject.
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City Center
The heart of the city with the market square, the Red Tower, Theaterplatz and the Karl Marx Monument.
View district →More Landmarks in Chemnitz
More attractions in the district
City Center
Karl Marx Monument (Nischel)
The 7.10-meter bronze head of Karl Marx on Brückenstraße is the city's unmistakable landmark, affectionately nicknamed the 'Nischel' by locals.
Free entry
City Center
Old and New Town Hall on the Market Square
On the historic market square, the Gothic Old Town Hall with its Renaissance portal and the magnificent New Town Hall with its tower form the city's representative center.
Free entry
City Center
Theaterplatz
The city's most beautiful preserved square unites the magnificent opera house, the Neo-Gothic St. Petri Church and the King Albert Museum into a coherent turn-of-the-century cultural ensemble.
Free entry
City Center
Chemnitz Art Collections
In the monumental King Albert Museum on Theaterplatz, the Art Collections show major works from Romanticism through Expressionism to the present, including pieces by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.
from 8 EUR