Wangenheimpalais

The Wangenheimpalais is a building in the Mitte district of Hanover. From 1863 to 1913, it served as the city hall and seat of the city administration of Hanover. Today, it is the seat of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The Wangenheimpalais was built between 1829 and 1832 according to plans by the Hanoverian court architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves. Georg Moller presumably had an advisory role in this. Georg von Wangenheim commissioned the construction. The building was also supplemented by Laves with a winter garden in 1844.

Ruler George V ascended the throne in 1851. Subsequently, the Crown Endowment acquired the building and made it a residential palace. George lived here for a period of ten years.

In 1862, the magistrate of the city of Hanover acquired the building and, after a renovation under Ludwig Droste, established the "new" city hall here. It served this purpose until 1913. Then the city hall moved into the newly built New City Hall diagonally opposite.

During the Second World War, the Wangenheimpalais was destroyed in one of the air raids on Hanover in 1943. It burned out but was rebuilt a few years later and used for municipal purposes. From 1957, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economic Affairs took up residence here. From 1994 to 2013, a bus stop conspicuously designed in the shape of a sailboat by Italian designer Massimo Iosa Ghini was located opposite the Wangenheimpalais, belonging to the Busstops art project. This was moved in 2013 to the opposite side of the street in front of the August Kestner Museum.