The Rathausgalerie is a place to linger. Formerly the cashier’s lobby of the New City Hall, it is a space filled with references to past eras including an impressive domed skylight, a marble fountain, columns decorated with capitals that support large, rounded arches, and eye-catching original period tiles with black-and-white ornamentation.

Here, visitors can experience art through events that offer individual access to exhibitions, whether in the form of encounters and discussions with artists and curators, guided tours, performances, workshops, or projects for all age groups.

Today’s Rathausgalerie is located in the New City Hall on the Marienplatz. It was built in the neo-Gothic architectural style during three building phases between 1867–1909 according to the plans of architect Georg von Hauberrisser. The New City Hall is the seat of the mayor and the city council and serves as the headquarters of Munich’s city administration.

At the time of its construction (1898–1905), the rooms of the Rathausgalerie housed the cashier’s lobby with its so-called Stadthauptkasse (city treasury), making it a central point of contact for Munich’s citizens, since they were required to pay their taxes and city fees in cash until the 1970s.

At its center was a painting entitled Monachia Distributes a Shower of Gold Together with the Münchner Kindl. Originally, the artist had planned to depict the individual departments of the city budget on each of the four sides of the roof. Instead, he was commissioned to depict the Oktoberfest and the city’s charitable foundations and institutions, which were intended to serve as symbols of the city administration’s revenues and expenditures.

Originally, the cashier offices were grouped around the courtyard on both sides, with the office of the city treasurer — containing the only access to the safe — situated at the rear. These interior fittings have since been removed, but the marble fountain remains in the center, flanked on both sides by twenty granite columns and pillars with bases and capitals made of Jura limestone from Treuchlingen. Above the entrance, a stone half-figure depicting a cashier with a money bag is a reminder of the original use of this space.

In the 1970s, the city treasurer’s office ceased cashier operations in the City Hall. Due to the hall’s unique architecture, the art scene endeavored to use the vacant space and was supported by the city council. A proposal regarding the “Situation of the Fine Arts in Munich” was passed by the city council on December 20, 1979, and became the founding resolution for the Rathausgalerie. As soon as December 1979, the artist Alfred Darda — with the support of then-cultural officer Jürgen Kolbe and the Professional Association of Visual Artists — organized and presented the exhibition Münchner Künstler im Rathaus (Munich Artists in City Hall), which featured more than 300 works by 121 Munich artists. The Rathausgalerie, as an exhibition venue for contemporary art, was born.

During its first few years, a wide range of very different exhibition formats were presented until the Department of Arts and Culture appointed Peter Pinnau as director. He proposed a new concept that turned the Rathausgalerie into a space for Munich artists. Johannes Muggenthaler assumed the directorship in 2009, and Nina Oswald has been responsible for the Rathausgalerie’s artistic program at the Department of Arts and Culture since January 2023.