This three-story Baroque building is decorated with gilded eagles and snow-white statues. However, it was not always like this. All the Baroque «decorations» appeared only in 1700, when the town hall building underwent reconstruction. By that time, it was already almost 400 years old!
This house was built in 1316 by the wealthy burgher Otto Heimo for himself and his family. But Duke Friedrich the Fair accused him of plotting against the ruling dynasty and, as punishment, took the house away. Later he gave it to the city, and then the Vienna administration moved into it.
The town hall was located in this building until 1883. But 10 years before that, construction of the New Town Hall began on Ring Square. The move was necessary: Vienna had grown so much that the administrative staff had to be expanded and a more spacious building had to be erected for it.
Now the building of the old town hall houses the archive and the Documentation Centre of the Austrian Resistance, where photographs and documents about the deportation of Austrians from the country during the war years are kept. It is difficult to get inside the building, but it is possible - for example, during some public events.
Be sure to take a look at the Andromeda wall fountain, which is located in the courtyard of the old town hall building, and the Chapel of Saint Saviour - the former family chapel of the Neuburgs.
