Merkurbrunnen

The Merkurbrunnen stands in Augsburg’s Maximilianstraße near St Moritz church where the mayor’s fisher street meets the main thoroughfare. It is one of three grand Renaissance fountains that line the route, created between 1596 and 1599 by the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries. The bronze group shows the winged god Mercury holding a caduceus, while a small winged Cupid kneels at his feet. The fountain was commissioned by the city’s two senior councillors, Johann Welser and Octavian Fugger, to celebrate Augsburg’s role as a trading hub. Inscriptions record repairs in 1628, 1661, 1713 and 1752, when rococo cartouches were added. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the Augsburg water-management system, of which the Merkurbrunnen is part, in 2019. Visitors find a ten-sided marble basin surrounding the bronze column. Water rises in thin jets from bronze masks shaped as dogs, Medusa, lions and eagles, each symbolising hazards that Mercury protects merchants from. The column itself bears the names and dates of every restoration, while the crowning Mercury figure now greets passers-by beneath a glass roof in the nearby Maximilian Museum.