The Böttcherstrasse is a 110-metre pedestrian alley connecting the Marktplatz to the Weser promenade, and one of the strangest stretches of 20th-century architecture in Germany. Ludwig Roselius, who made his fortune from decaffeinated coffee, commissioned artists including Bernhard Hoetger to transform the alley in the 1920s into an expressionist fantasy of brick, bronze, carved wood, and coloured tile.
The highlights include the golden relief of the Archangel Michael fighting a dragon at the entrance, the Roselius House museum (medieval art and furniture), the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, and a glockenspiel tower whose porcelain bells play twice daily. The architectural language is deliberately anti-classical — part medieval fantasy, part Art Nouveau, part early modernism. The whole alley is listed and owned by the Roselius Foundation.