Stone House

In a complex of buildings on Benediktsplatz 1 in the historic city centre, a medieval stone building is located. Exceptionally numerous essential structures from its time of construction around 1250 have been preserved.

Picture: Stone House behind City Hall Picture: © TLDA, W. Streitberger

These comprise the portals to both main storeys, the beamed storey ceiling, the original stepped gable as well as the wooden roof structure.

Unique throughout Europe is the upper storey's room interior with a lancet arched vented lighting niche, hardly changed outer walls with scored joints as well as a painted beam ceiling whose beams have been dated to 1241/42.

The boards of the ceiling are consistently decorated with a wheel motif, while each of the beams features different ornamentation.

The Stone House is an exceptional testimony of late medieval secular building culture which can be related to Jewish owners from the end of the 13^th century at the latest. As such, it complements the ritual buildings of the Old Synagogue and the mikveh and forms another important part of the Erfurt Unesco application.

The fundamental investigation of the building began in April 2015. The two-year project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and carried out jointly by the building researcher Dr Barbara Perlich, TU Berlin, and the restorer and art historian Prof. Christoph Merzenich, FH Erfurt. The results of the research project were published in 2019: Barbara Perlich (Hg.): Wohnen, beten, handeln. Das hochmittelalterliche jüdische
Quartier "ante pontem" der Stadt Erfurt, Petersberg 2019.

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