Handpicked experience · Munich
Munich, Germany
Courtroom 600 was not retired into a museum after the tribunal: ordinary criminal cases were heard in the same room for decades, and routine court use only ended in 2020.
A courtroom that went on doing its job for decades after the tribunal
A location chosen for logistics rather than for meaning
A structure that survived precisely because it was never completed
An exhibition set inside the building it is about
A medieval centre that is a reconstruction, and says so
Rail travel, which removes the driving from a long day
A day trip to Nuremberg from Munich, travelling by train, for a city that carries two entirely separate reputations: a medieval trading town rebuilt after near-total destruction, and the place where the Nazi party staged its rallies and was later put on trial. The second is what most visitors come for, and it is more interesting than the shorthand suggests.
The tribunal sat in Courtroom 600 of the Palace of Justice from late 1945. What is easy to miss is that the room was not then retired into a museum. It went back to being a courtroom, and for decades afterwards ordinary criminal cases were heard in it — the same panelled room, under the same ceiling, with defendants accused of burglary and assault. Routine judicial use only ended in 2020.
That continuity is the point. Nothing about it was preserved as a shrine, because the building had a job to do. The memorial exhibition sits upstairs, and the room below carried on.
Nuremberg was not selected for its symbolism, whatever was said afterwards. The Palace of Justice was one of the few large buildings still standing and usable, it had enough space for an international court and its press corps, and — decisively — it had a large prison attached to it. The accused could be moved from cell to courtroom without leaving the complex, which mattered a great deal in 1945.
Out at the rally grounds stands the Congress Hall, begun in the mid-1930s and designed to seat more than fifty thousand people. Work stopped when the war began and was never restarted, so it has stood as an open shell ever since — a horseshoe of brick with no roof, and no interior it was ever meant to be seen without.
Its incompleteness is why it survived: too big to demolish economically, too plainly unfinished to be triumphant. A documentation centre now occupies the northern wing, and the contrast between the exhibition inside and the raw structure around it does more work than either would alone.
The old town was almost entirely destroyed in a single raid in January 1945 and rebuilt afterwards on its medieval plan. Knowing that changes how the centre reads, and it is worth being told before you walk through it rather than after.
The train each way accounts for a substantial part of the day and is comfortable. Sites are spread out and the rally grounds are some distance from the centre. Both the memorial and the documentation centre are indoor and detailed; allow more time than you expect for the reading. Material at both is difficult by nature and is presented without softening.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
By train from Munich in each direction, which takes a substantial share of the day.
In a numbered chamber of the city's main judicial building, beginning in the closing months of 1945.
No. It returned to ordinary judicial work and heard everyday criminal cases for decades.
Routine court use ended in 2020, after which the room became permanently part of the memorial.
Because the courthouse was still standing and usable, had space for an international court, and had a prison attached.
The accused could be moved from cell to court without leaving the building complex.
A congress hall designed for more than fifty thousand people, abandoned when the war began and never completed.
A documentation centre occupies its northern wing, inside the unfinished shell.