The town hall built entirely out of spite

Here's the Bamberg story I keep coming back to. The Old Town Hall sits on its own little island in the middle of the river, joined to both banks by bridges, and it's one of the most photographed buildings in Bavaria. It's also, according to local legend, a monument to somebody refusing to take no for an answer.

The story goes that the local bishop refused to give the townspeople any land in Bamberg to build a town hall on. So rather than give up, they drove hundreds of oak piles straight into the riverbed and built their own island instead, filled in with gravel, sand and earth, land the bishop had no claim over at all. The first town hall on the site is mentioned back in 1386, it burned down in 1460, and the building that stands there today went up the following year. Centuries later, it's still sitting there in the middle of the water, a town hall that exists purely because somebody was told no and decided to build their own answer instead.

I painted it in watercolour and ink, that warm painted facade rising straight out of the river. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: The Old Town Hall, Bamberg · Travel Poster