Bremen’s Schnoorviertel (or Schnoor) is a delight for visitors. The city quarter on the Weser, south-east of Marktplatz, offers a glimpse of what Bremen looked and felt like in the Middle Ages, when Hanseatic trade, craftsmanship and faith shaped daily life.

The area survived the bombing of World War II without needing full demolition and its street plan and many houses from the 15th and 16th centuries survive.

But the city’s restored oldest precinct also preserves the spirit of the common people who held a mighty trading city together for centuries.

Streets retain historical atmosphere

The Schnoorviertel is centred on Schnoor, a street named for string or cord. The ambience of narrow and winding cobbled streets such as Spiekerbartstrasse captures its intriguing character. The irregular pattern grew from centuries of everyday necessity.

The tightly packed two and three-storey red-brick and half-timbered buildings are complemented by restaurants, cafes, boutique shops and other businesses.

There are about 100 houses squeezed into about 2ha. Those at Schnoor 2 and Schnoor 15 are among the oldest and are believed to go back to about 1400. Parts of a 13th century city wall are also visible.

Later buildings include Baroque and 19th century styles and a highlight between Schnoor 37 and 38 (street numbering is sequential) is the portal known as Alexanderbogen, dated 1627, with its decorative stone reliefs.

In the early Middle Ages the precinct started as a virtual island, a mound threatened by flooding. As Bremen grew it became the home of fishers, boatmen and ropemakers who produced the rigging and tackle needed by the city’s merchant fleet. The residents maintained a ferry that shuttled across the Weser, a service which by the 14th century was replaced by a bridge.

Other tradesmen, chandlers and workers probably made up the rest of the medieval population, but signs of the affluence that grew through trade crept in during the 17th century.

The focal point used to be on a stream known as Balge, which once ran parallel to the Weser but gradually silted up and was filled in during the 19th century. This process was accelerated by the building of toilets out over the water and the medieval practice of using waterways as rubbish dumps. But the Balge’s memory is maintained in street names and is marked today in areas of paving.

A bird's-eye view plan of Bremen engraved by Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg, from about 1610, shows the Schnoor area in the south-east corner. Braun wrote:

The citizens of the city are either merchants or artisans and there is an inordinate number of
skilled shipwrights. By nature they are quarrelsome, clever and tend towards rebellion, as testified
by past and recent history.

(Translation Füssel/Taschen Books)

Church as a chronicle of Bremen

Faith also had its place in the Schnoorviertel. The red-brick Gothic church Propsteikirche St Johann at Hohe Strasse 2 is unusual in being a Bremen Catholic church. But it is also probably Bremen’s oldest surviving structure and offers a unique connection with the Black Death, which had raged through the city by the time the hall basilica with three aisles was built about 1350.

Much of the building fund for the church came from the funeral endowments of plague victims. The seaborne shipments of Bremen's trade traffic are believed to have helped spread disease and mercantile ports such as Bremen with cramped conditions suffered grievously. Estimates of numbers killed vary between 40% and 70% of the population in the late 1340s and early 1350s.

The site had been occupied by an earlier monastery church built by Franciscan monks, who established themselves there after arriving in Bremen in 1225.

The Reformation swept Bremen in the 1520s and the monastery was closed, replaced by the city's first hospital and mental asylum. St Johann became the hospital church, but was also used temporarily by Protestant congregations whose churches were being rebuilt.

The monastery site remained a hospital until the mid-17th century and then became a retirement home. From the 1680s Huguenot Protestants and Belgian religious refugees also held services there.

In 1823 it once more became a Catholic church and today offers mass in English as well as German.

The Gothic features, a decorated gable and high vaults remain, along with a pietà from about 1600. The font is Neogothic. In 2016 the latest church restoration was completed.

Living heritage salvaged

But by the 20th century the Schnoorviertel was down at heel and used by prostitutes. After the war the area faced destruction in the name of development but heritage advice stood against obliterating its winding streets.

Instead, the Schnoorviertel was declared a preservation area and many of the tiny structures and narrow laneways were restored or rebuilt. Its buildings were heritage-listed one by one over decades.

The new aims were to preserve Bremen's links with a lively city tradition and for citizens and visitors to enjoy a leisure space – especially on Sundays, when the shops remain open.

The stories of the Schnoorviertel are also kept alive in an active tradition. The building at Wüstestätte 10 is home to the Bremer Geschichtenhaus, a living history museum where costumed actors tell the story of Bremen from the 1600s to early 1900s. Tiny art galleries and workshops keep alive the tradition of craftsmanship and are a source of souvenirs, toys and other gifts, and Bremen speciality confectionery.

Institut für Niederdeutsche Sprache is an educational institution dedicated to the preservation of the language known as Low German (Plattdeutsch, Platt or Niederdeutsch), its culture and literature. INS has a headquarters and a small library at Schnoor 41. The speech of the people known as Bremer remains alive and is continued in the surname Bremer.

The Hochzeitshaus at Kolpingstrasse 9 is a survival of a tradition of ‘wedding houses’ that dates back to the Middle Ages. Young couples stayed in these lodgings for a few nights when they travelled from the countryside to get married in Bremen’s cathedral, the Dom St Petri. The tiny building is now claimed as one of the smallest hotels in the world and promoted as a venue for honeymoons.

Another local claim is the ‘smallest house in Germany’, for a tiny holiday apartment at Hinter der Balge 9.

Visiting Bremen's Schnoorviertel

Visitors should see the Schnoorviertel as more than a tourist attraction. It stands for the continuity of Bremen’s Hanseatic traditions and its resilience through change and war. To walk its lanes is to connect with a past when neighbourhoods were on an intimate scale, a place where ordinary people once lived, worked and formed communities.

It’s an important part of Bremen’s history and belongs with the Altes Rathaus and the Böttcherstrasse arts precinct as part of the city’s cultural heritage. Guided tours can be booked at the tourist information office.

Take tram 2, 3, 4, 6 or 8 to Domsheide.

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