In medieval towns with town weighing offices, these buildings played a key role in trade. They were usually located in the central market place, adjacent to town halls, stalls and trade benches. This positioning symbolised the importance of trade in urban life. In Nysa, this tradition is reflected in one of the few surviving buildings of this type in the region, known as the Town Scales House, which, despite destruction and transformation, has survived as a testimony to times gone by.
Nysa probably already had the privilege of maintaining a town weighing scales at the beginning of the 14th century. The initial form and location of the scales building, however, remain unknown. Historical documents mention that the building of the weighing scales was part of a compact mid-market development, the centrepiece of which was the town hall and town hall tower. Numerous stalls and market stalls were located next to it, and the scales building housed the office responsible for checking weights and measures.
The centre of Nysa in 1852. Source: British Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The current building was built between 1602 and 1604 in the Northern Renaissance (Dutch) style. In 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Town Weigh House suffered severe damage. To commemorate those events, a stone cannonball was embedded in the southern façade of the building. The costly reconstruction was not carried out until many years later. Between 1888 and 1890, Heinrich Irmann carried out restoration work on the damaged polychromes, which had suffered from the effects of war and the passage of time.
The Municipal Weigh House at the end of the 19th century and today. Source: Silesian Digital Library and Piotr.fuz, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
During this period, the exterior facades were also renovated and missing elements were completed, and the building’s interior was partially rebuilt, restoring it to its former glory. Unfortunately, in 1945 the building was severely damaged by the Red Army after the capture of Nysa – among other things, its front elevation with arcades collapsed. The reconstruction in 1947-1948 preserved the historic character of the building, although its architectural form was simplified, without restoring the destroyed sculptures and paintings. Since 1955, it has housed the Nysa Public Library. In the years 2010-2012, a thorough renovation of the monument was carried out, which included conservation of the preserved polychromes, reconstruction of the sculptures decorating the gable and partial restoration of the building’s former splendour.
A fragment of the Nysa market square in the early 20th century and in 2017. Source: Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek and Google Maps
The Nysa Municipal Weigh House ranks among the finest works of secular bourgeois architecture of modern times. The building is located in the south-western part of the market block, originally intersected by internal streets. The three-storey rectangular-plan structure was built of brick and covered with a gabled roof. On the front side, it has a two-bay arcade with rustication made of chiselled stone, which emphasises its representative character.
The square in front of the Scales in 1930 and 2023. Source: Deutsche Fotothek www.deutschefotothek.de and Google Maps
The facades of the building were once richly decorated with polychromes of various themes, figural sculptures and obelisks. Today, only the sculpture of Justice and fragments of the paintings on the side walls, which were repainted in the 19th century, have survived. A distinctive feature is the late Renaissance four-storey gable decorated with allegorical sculptures, which were reconstructed during the last restoration. The interiors of the building have three tracts and were modernised during the post-war reconstruction to adapt them to modern day functions.
The reconstruction of the monument in the late 1940s and the building today. Source: The County Museum in Nysa and Jacek Halicki, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL, via Wikimedia Commons
The Town Scales House in Nysa is a unique monument that reminds us of the city’s commercial roots. As one of a handful of surviving buildings of the former mid-market, it now plays a cultural role, housing a public library. The renovations carried out have made it possible to preserve its heritage, making it not only a testimony to history, but also an important part of the city’s identity.
In the vicinity of the monument, a new development was erected in 2023 to replace tenement houses destroyed in 1945. The investment aroused considerable controversy and indignation, mainly due to the inappropriate and incongruous form of the new development, which was added to the historically valuable centre of Nysa.
Source: zabytek.pl, nysa.eu
Read also: Architecture | Metamorphosis | Monument | City | Architecture in Poland
