Discover history: Chemnitzer Tor / Moritzhof
The trade route from the Ore Mountains
The road from the Altchemnitz settlement was an important trade route from the upper Ore Mountains.
It met the town fortifications at the Chemnitz Gate and led to the Holzmarkt as Chemnitz Lane.
The Chemnitz gate tower dates back to 1521. However, this cannot be verified as the city's expenditure books from this period are missing. As a special feature, a strange brush-shaped sign adorned the ridge turret. It has long been speculated that it served as a lightning rod.
Although new prison buildings were erected on both sides of the gate in 1811, this did not halt the decay of the town fortifications. Finally, the tower and gate were completely demolished in 1856.
The old post office
In 1833, when the premises on Neumarkt became too small for the growing Chemnitz postal service, the post office initially moved into two houses on Chemnitzer Gasse. The main post office building was then built on the filled-in moat at the former Chemnitzer Tor until 1859. It gave the neighbouring traffic axis the name "Poststraße" from 1860.
At the beginning, 66 clerks processed 1370 postal items a day, but the increase in postal traffic after the unification of the Reich made a large extension to the existing building necessary. It was built on the site of the former "Drei Schwanen" restaurant on Lange Straße and is the only part of the complex still standing today.
The Moritzhof
With the reorganisation of the Chemnitz city administration in 1996, the foundation stone was laid for a modern new administration building costing 200 million Deutschmarks on the bus turning area at the former Chemnitzer Tor. The "Moritzhof", located between Moritzstrasse and Bahnhofstrasse, has been home to municipal offices and the head office of Sparkasse Chemnitz since 1997.