Kaiserslautern Town Hall

The Kaiserslautern Town Hall is hard to miss — at 113 metres it dominates the city skyline and represents one of Germany's more ambitious examples of 1960s civic architecture. The building is quintessential brutalism: a tall concrete tower with a low horizontal base building, all raw material and strong geometric form.

Love it or loathe it, the building has become part of Kaiserslautern's identity, and the observation level offers the best views over the city and the surrounding Palatinate Forest. The civic offices inside are open during business hours.

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A story
Kaiserslautern's Rathaus, built between 1966 and 1972, is one of Germany's tallest town halls at 113 metres. It was designed by Roland Ostertag in a brutalist style — a tower of raw concrete and glass rising over the old city centre. It was controversial then and remains so: some see it as an eyesore that destroyed the historic character of the city centre; others view it as an honest expression of postwar urban ambition.

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