The council chamber has a richly carved wooden wall from 1462. The statue of Roland, the medieval knight representing the city's freedom, on the square is a faithful copy of the 16th-century original that was destroyed by a storm in 1972. Although Stendal's medieval fortification wall was razed in the 19th century and replaced by a ring boulevard, two of the magnificent city gates remain standing. Its long cobblestone main street, appropriately called Lange Strasse, is lined by lovingly renovated half-timbered houses of burghers and merchants. Civic pride and community spirit, even during Communist times, are one reason for the marked contrast with Stendal.
History is another.
Its fortress castle on the left bank of the Elbe, now a ruin, predates Albert the Bear and his campaigns by more than 100 years and served as one of the Holy Roman Empire's easternmost border fortifications. In the 1370s, after he had won control of the Brandenburg march from the Wittelsbach dynasty and conferred the title of margrave and elector on his son Wenceslaus, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV enlarged the castle and designated it as his second capital and residence, after the Hradcin in Prague. But by then Tangerm nde was already a member of the Hanseatic League and one of the richest commercial towns on the Elbe. Much of the city's splendor is a legacy from those times. You could spend days here imagining yourself back in the Middle Ages.