This is the way in! The entrance - the overture of the house

About the architectural tour

Whether we go to the office or to the supermarket: we use entrances every day, we pass through doors but only notice them casually, out of habit and because modern entrances pretend they don’t exist: the glass doors of the hotel entrance open by themselves.

In the late 19th century, when Wiesbaden became a big city, things were different: entrances welcomed visitors and served as a means of self-expression. The portal of the Landeshaus is designed to impress with its mighty portico. It demonstratively marks the threshold between outside and inside, the transition from public to semi-public space. Similar to this are the residential buildings on Gutenbergplatz, whose entrances are guarded by obelisks: The visitor automatically assumes a posture when approaching the wrought-iron front doors.

Entrances to houses are a built form of interaction, they tell us something about the habitus of the (former) inhabitants and the change in our self-image: modernity does not attach importance to representation – and falls into the house with the door: even the apartment buildings on the upper Klopstockstraße from the 1920s do without a driveway and front garden. The two churches in the district show how important the entrance can be, even today: the gates of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church), like the columned portal of the Lutherkirche (Lutheran Church), alert the visitor to the fact that he is entering a different, sacred space – he involuntarily pauses.

With Christopher Schwarz, jury member of the German Architecture Prize.

Or would you rather come along to our other architectural tour: about beautiful and lively places in the city?