Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2013 - 27

The Marienhof excavation has uncovered evidence of some
of the first stone buildings in Munich, including this medieval
wall, built around 1300.

The excavation at Marienhof tells the story of what urban
planners today would call a “mixed-use neighborhood” that
began before the city walls were even built in 1173. In fact, the
project has shown that the walls were constructed to protect
a settlement that was thriving before it was ﬁrst recorded in
history books as “Muniken” or “Munken,” and before the city’s
founding charter was signed in 1158.
Once it was encircled by walls, a mix of merchants, tradesmen, and nobles eager to be as close as possible to city hall
settled in. “It was a colorful neighborhood where patricians
and craftsmen lived side by side,” says Behrer. “We can see
the whole spectrum of medieval society from here.” For
example, because the area’s houses were so close together,
a workmen’s latrine was found just 10 feet from the cesspit
of a rich medieval merchant’s house. Over the course of the
last 700 years, the area was also home to a small cloister, a
public bath, police headquarters, a café, and a library. A darker
period of Munich’s past also left its mark: A synagogue and
Jewish school occupied the center of the site from 1380 until
the Jews were expelled from the city in 1442.
Beyond the low steel-wire construction fence that enclosed
the dig, the city took little notice of the massive excavation,
covering 2.5 acres, that went on in its midst. A scantily clad
Esprit model looked down from a billboard at one end of the
square. At the other end, a stylish food emporium bustled
with midday shoppers. High above, the dark glass windows of
luxury apartments overlooked the excavation’s piles of earth
and temporary trailers. “There are lots of expensive shops and
residences here, and people are very sensitive when there’s a
lot of dust everywhere. If I paid a million and a half euros [$2
million] for an apartment, I wouldn’t be eager to have a construction site outside either,” says Jochen Haberstroh, a department head at the Bavarian State Preservation Oﬃce, who was
responsible for ensuring that the excavation was carried out
properly. “It’s good that we came up with some solid results.”
Unlike many archaeological excavations, which proceed
in layers from most recent on top to oldest on the bottom,
the stratigraphy of urban excavations can be a knotty mess of
mixed-up chronology. For centuries, residents of Munich who
wanted more living space had to build additional stories on top
of their houses or dig new cellars.
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Thus, foundations of dwellings from the Middle Ages
sometimes sit atop basements dug centuries later, and the
city’s nineteenth-century sewer pipes run parallel to what
was once a defensive moat around Munich’s twelfth-century
outer walls. “The city was too small almost immediately, and
overﬂowed its walls within a few decades of its founding,”
says Haberstroh. “It was developing dynamically, even in the
early years. I didn’t expect [to ﬁnd] that at all.” Property
boundaries, unchanged for centuries and preserved after
the destruction of the war, have made it easy for archaeologists to tie house foundations to tax records in the city
archives, sometimes even revealing the names and occupations of their long-ago owners. The house on the corner of

Remains of many of the neighborhood’s multistory residential
structures, including these cellars, have also been uncovered.

Schramm and Diener streets, for example, was occupied by
town clerk Peter Kruembel and his wine-merchant son in
the late thirteenth century. Five hundred years later it was
a hotel called the Blue Grape.

ast October, archaeologists took their ﬁnal measurements and backﬁlled the Marienhof, smoothing the
ground over to await construction of the subway. It
will take them years to process all the evidence they gathered,
and more surprises may yet emerge. But this could be the last
dig of its kind Munich will ever see. There are precious few
undisturbed spaces underneath the city, and none as central—
or with as many layers of the past—as this unlikely parcel.
“This is the biggest-ever city-center excavation in Munich,
and probably in southern Germany,” Haberstroh says. “When
we’re done, it’s gone.” The wealth of ﬁnds, some of which are
shown on the following pages, will keep scholars busy for years,
illuminating the history of Munich even as a new train line
tunnels through its remains.
27

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Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 2013