Market Square

The market square of Greifswald, with its splendid Gothic gabled houses, plays an important role in the city’s history but also in the life of Caspar David Friedrich. Greifswald, or rather the Pomeranian State Museum, is lucky to own and to be able to show a very special watercolour painting of the square, featuring the Ratsapotheke (literally: Council Apothecary) and part of the townhall.

The watercolour was painted by Friedrich in 1818, when the artist and his young wife, Caroline Bommer, visited Greifswald on their honeymoon. They stayed with Friedrich’s brother Heinrich, in a house directly adjacent to the market square. The house at Markt 10 today accommodates the Caspar David Friedrich Branch of the Sparkasse Vorpommern (Savings Bank of Pomerania), where seventeen of the artist’s paintings – all reproductions from various periods of his career – are displayed in the hall of mirrors.