Marburg's 800th anniversary

The city of Marburg an der Lahn celebrated 800th anniversary of the town charter in 2022. With the City we looked back on a fascinating history, remarkable buildings, far-reaching events and milestones in science.

The playful approach of cardandcube to geometry has examples in this city's history: The decorative floors of the sacristies of the Elisabeth Church and the castle church of the Hessian landgraves.They show ambiguous images, that is pictures or patterns that cannot be seen at the same time, but only alternatively. Similar decorative floors can be found in late Romanesque and early Gothic churches north of the Alps, for example in St-Denis in Paris. South of the Alps, the tradition of patterns that deceive the senses goes back to antiquity (Pompeii).

Another work of art in Marburg that challenges sight and spirit is a detail of the magnificent Renaissance Wooden portal in the Prince's Hall of the Landgrave's Palace.


Legend: Inlay with impossible tubes as depicted by Nikolas Hagenmüller, 1573. We thank the Museum for Cultural History of the Philipps University of Marburg for the Permission to show this picture.

This Marburg work of art also testifies to the integration of our city into the European art scene. The items it shows are just as "impossible" as the construction of the "The Magpie on the Gallows" painting by Pieter Breughel d. Ä, Hagenmüller's contemporary, which is in the Hessian Art Collection in Darmstadt.

We wish the guests of our city as well as our fellow citizens even more discoveries in the Marburg cityscape

                                 cardandcube, Marburg 2021