Komödie am Altstadtmarkt

The Komödie am Altstadtmarkt is a private theatre in the city of Braunschweig and at the same time Lower Saxony's largest private boulevard and entertainment theatre. The three-storey building was erected between 1715 and 1720 as a trade-fair house, presumably to a design by Hermann Korb. In house No. 7 was Schrader's Hotel, where in April 1875 Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima stayed while attending a Tannhäuser performance in Braunschweig. The ballroom of the former hotel later became first a cinema auditorium and is today the theatre hall of the Komödie am Altstadtmarkt. The building was heavily damaged during the Second World War and rebuilt in keeping with its Baroque state. In the southern part of the building is the Sander furniture house, founded in 1857. Under the name Regina-Filmtheater, a programme cinema with around 500 seats opened in 1949 in the northern part of the building. After being renamed in 1974, the cinema became known as Die Lupe and fundamentally changed its concept — printing monthly programmes, showing films in their original versions and changing them more frequently.