Georgenstraße 43-47, Eisenach

The Hellgrevenhof is a historic building complex in Eisenach, a town in Thuringia known for its Wartburg Castle. It stands in the western part of the old town, near the former Georgentor city gate. The site includes the Kemenate, a stone building thought to be the oldest surviving secular structure within Eisenach’s medieval walls. Also part of the ensemble is the Storchenturm, a former watch and prison tower. Today the complex houses the city library, a restaurant, offices and a local radio studio. The Kemenate dates back to the Romanesque period, with its oldest parts from the 12th or 13th century. Archaeologists found traces of a 13th-century noble family called Hellgrafe, whose name lives on in the site’s title. Over the centuries the building served as a court, a pawnbroker’s office and even a smithy. After years of neglect in the 20th century, a 1990s renovation saved the structure and revealed its layered past. Beneath the library’s floors lie a medieval cesspit filled with thousands of small finds from the former inn Zur Güldenen Sonne. Visitors enter through an inner courtyard with a well and climb a stone stair to the library’s reading rooms. The ground floor contains a vaulted hall with an 18th-century star-shaped ceiling. Upstairs, fragments of painted hunting scenes hint at the grand reception rooms of earlier times. The Storchenturm offers a quiet spot to look across the rooftops towards the Wartburg. Nearby, the restored Kemenate stands as a reminder of Eisenach’s medieval life and the families who shaped its history.