The Town Hall

You are standing in front of the main entrance to the Renaissance town hall.

In front of you there stands the most valuable monument in Luban and one of the most beautiful secular Renaissance buildings in Lower Silesia - the Town Hall, built between 1539 and 1544.

Over the centuries the building has been destroyed by fire several times. The first one occured in 1554, when a fire robbed the Town Hall of its extraordinary splendour. However, none of the fires which damaged the Town Hall as badly as the shells fired by the German and Soviet armies fighting for the town in 1945. Due to some severe damages the building was in danger of collapsing. Nevertheless, it was decided to rebuild the Town Hall and the renovation work continued until 1972.

The main entrance to the building is decorated with a Renaissance portal that reminds of an ancient triumphal arch and it consists of four columns supporting a decorative frieze. There are two coats of arms between the columns: the Lubań coat of arms (crossed keys) on the right and the Habsburg coat of arms (double-headed eagle) on the left. In the central part of the frieze there are two boys resting on skulls and in their hands they hold tablets with the inscription that says: hodie mihi, cras tibi - today I, tomorrow you.

To the right of the entrance there is another portal, considered as one of the most beautiful in Lower Silesia. Originally, it was an entrance portal and the decoration with acanthus leaves and vines shows Italian inspiration. The central part of the portal is a Romanesque arch decorated with half humans and half dolphins.

The most splendid room in the Town Hall is the Council Chamber, formerly known as the Royal Chamber named after the portraits of the Dukes of Saxony, the Polish kings and the Prussian kings that used to hang here. On the other side of the building there is the entrance to the Ljubljana Wedding Hall and the Regional Museum, where you can see interesting exhibitions on the history of the city and the region. The entrance is decorated with a magnificent 18th-century baroque portal surmounted by a statue of Mercury, the Roman god of trade, profit and commerce. The portal was moved from the demolished bricklayers' school.

The Town Hall currently houses City and District Public Library, Regional Museum and Regional Centre for Environmental Education.   

Interesting Facts:

1. Blowing faces
At the main entrance to the Town Hall (from the Cloth Hall) there are bas-reliefs of blowing faces at the foot of the entrance door on either side. Their purpose is to ward off any misfortune from the town. To this end, they symbolically blow the feet of people entering the Town Hall away from the problems and misfortunes they might bring to the Town Hall - a symbol of the town's ambition, power, municipal rights and history.

2. The Town Hall Tower
The towers of Lubań have always had a prestigious and promotional function. The people of Lubań were proud when a tourist, looking at the panorama of the town, exclaimed: "Oh my, but Luban has towers". One of them was the town hall tower. During the day it was manned by a signalman/city musician, while at night (from 6pm to 6am) there were two guards. Every quarter of an hour one of them would walk around the top of the tower shouting the words "Guards, beware, beware" to the other guards.