Old Town Hall – in the centre of Wroclaw

Old Town Hall – in the centre of Wroclaw

Looking from the outside of the Town Hall, you may not notice this is once an important building to Wroclaw. There is no big banner telling you that this is the Town Hall which served for political purpose in the past, not even after you have stepped into it. It is because the Town Hall is now for art exhibitions as well as some permanent exhibitions about Town Hall history and architecture.

Town Hall is one of the members of the City Museum of Wroclaw. So don't be surprised that when you get the ticket which is exactly the same as the one for City Museum. Unfortunately even they are in the same group, you cannot visit the Town Hall for free when you hold the ticket of city museum. Remember to buy one new ticket.

There are two floors in the Town Hall. On the ground floor, I could only spot that there are 2 rooms for permanent exhibitions about the Town Hall. One of them contains descriptions of the architecture style of Town Hall while the other one shows some furnitures used in the past in the Town Hall. The rest of the room are for temporary exhibitions. When I visited the Town Hall, there are two exhibitions : „Journey Line” concerning the Jewish story in Concentration Camp and „Meta Przemiana I Andrzej Dudek-Durer Żywa Rzeźba” for the works of the artist Andrzej Dudek-Durer. There are a hall and several small rooms on the second floor which does not really have much thing to see. In the small rooms there are an exhibition showing the fancy silvery products. Maybe staying outside and take pictures of the Town Hall is better than exploring the inside.

However, the temporary exhibitions are worth visiting. The surrealist works of Andrzej Dudek-Durer, to be honest, are really difficult for me to understand. Maybe someone rich in experiece of appreciating surreal works or contemporary works can understand. It is different scenerio for the exhibition „Journey Line”. In fact there are two parts of the exhibition, one in the Town Hall and the other one is in the White Stork Synagogue. One of the artist, Nicola Tucker explained in the exhibition that she was inspired by a story told by a Jew who has been to the Concentration Camp. He mentioned that he and his father were sent to the Concentration camp. His father was asked to show his skills of a tailor or he would be killed immediately. As his father was not willing to work for Nazi, he was killed.

What is the journey feel like if the destination is „death”? What does life means under such situation? There were works of two other artists shown in the exhibition describing the above answers. For me I was impressed by one particular oil painting by Maciej Hoffman. The name of the oil painting is „touch”.

It is an oil painting that consists of several items, a woman with a broken dress, people with broken arms or broken legs, headless people. It stated that from the perspective of the artists human being is very frague. To a more extremely extent, nobody can withstand such treatment. It reminded us one more time that holocaust is a sadness on human history.

As there are always temporary exhibitions in the Town Hall. Go and check whether there is any interesting exhibition is taking place when you visit it. Sometime you are lucky enough to encounter an exhibition with english description!