Altes Theater

The Alte Theater, also called Brotlaube, stands in Ravensburg’s old town on Marktstraße. Built in 1625 as a market hall and trading house, it is the only large early-Baroque building left in the city centre and the last grand civic structure from Ravensburg’s free imperial city era. The ground floor once housed the bakers’, butchers’ and furriers’ guild shops, while the upper hall became home to theatre and museum over the centuries. The building’s most striking feature is its vaulted ground-floor hall, divided by a low wall with many openings into two covered walkways that link Marktstraße to Gespinstmarkt. A spiral staircase in a turret on the Gespinstmarkt side once gave access to the upper storey, but today visitors enter through a modern extension that contains a foyer and extra rooms. Two carved stone reliefs mark the entrances: a grand one on Marktstraße showing the city arms and the imperial eagle, and a simpler version beside the turret. Upstairs, the large hall has served as a theatre stage, a museum gallery and a concert venue. Below, the vaulted cellar once held Ottokar’s Puppet Theatre and now hosts the Ravensburg Puppet Theatre’s performances. On Saturday mornings the ground-floor hall fills again with stalls selling bread, cheese, meat and eggs, echoing its original purpose.