Jugendstil-Festhalle Landau

An anonymous donor gave Landau 600,000 marks in 1904 and kept his name out of it for two decades; only after 1925 was the gift traced to August Ludowici, a manufacturer of roof tiles. The town added 200,000 more and built the Festhalle between 1905 and 1907 to designs by Hermann Goerke, its portals carved by Gustav Adolf Bernd — one of the most considerable Jugendstil buildings in southern Germany. Concerts, plays, lectures, balls and civic receptions have filled it ever since. Between 1997 and 2001 the Danish practice Dissing + Weitling renewed stage, lighting, sound and conference systems without disturbing the ornament, which is the harder half of such work.