Kaiser-Friedrich-Halle

Fire has twice remade this building. Mönchengladbach raised the Kaiser-Friedrich-Halle between 1901 and 1903 to designs by Friedrich Wilhelm Wertz and Paul Huber of Wiesbaden — Jugendstil, and named for an emperor whose reign lasted ninety-nine days — with private subscribers covering roughly half the cost. It came through the war largely intact and was rebuilt internally as a concert house in 1959, only to burn to the ground in 1964; reconstruction ran from 1967 to 1969. A second serious fire in 1977 brought further alteration, and the encircling balcony was not put back. The hall now works as a congress and cultural centre, its diary running from symphonic programmes to popular galas, with a restaurant at the rear looking out over the Bunter Garten.