Bremer Ratskeller, Bremen

The claim

The wine cellar under Bremen's town hall, vaulted rooms running beneath the market place where the city has poured German wine since the fifteenth century. The council held the right to sell wine from 1330 and moved its cellar into the new town hall in 1405, serving two sorts of Rhine wine at two prices. The hall above is a World Heritage site; the card below still prices wine by the glass.

What the records show

Bremen's council held the privilege of selling wine from 1330, and an ordinance of 1342 restricted the trade to wine lords the council appointed, which is how the city kept the price and took the duty. The house dates itself from 1405: with the building of the town hall that year the city's wine cellar moved into its vaults to supply the citizens, and two sorts of Rhine wine were poured, the common and the better, at two prices. That is wine sold to the public on these premises at the claimed date, although no charter naming 1405 was read here and the year is also the year the town hall was begun. The rooms grew around the trade — the Apostelkeller, the Senatszimmer and the Priölken between 1550 and 1600, a room called the Rose for the best bottles, where a Rüdesheimer of 1653 still lies, and the Bacchuskeller and the Hauffsaal in 1620. The four carved show-casks in the historic hall were given between 1723 and 1760 to Bremen's mayors, who were also its wine lords. The hall above was inscribed as a World Heritage site with the Roland statue in 2004, and German Wikipedia records monument protection since 1973. The cellar's eating rooms are let to a Bremen hotel while the wine business belongs to the city, which sells about 650 German wines, so the first question needed answering rather than assuming: its own drinks card prices German wine by the fifth of a litre as well as by the bottle and lists beer from the tap, and a survey of the house records it open an hour before the kitchen starts and after the kitchen stops.

Dated evidence for Bremer Ratskeller, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1405	Claimed founding	The pub
c.1405	Present building	German Wikipedia
1405	First record of a drinking house here	Wikipedia

What to look for inside

A room called the Rose holds a Rüdesheimer of 1653
Four carved show-casks given to Bremen's mayors between 1723 and 1760
The town hall above it is a World Heritage site, inscribed in 2004

Visiting

Bremer Ratskeller is in Bremen, Germany, at Am Markt, 28195 Bremen. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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