The Beautiful Fountain in Front of the Frauenkirche in Nuremberg

The square Rudolf von Alt painted in 1854 is Nuremberg's main market, and its beginnings are grim. Until 1349 the city's Jewish quarter stood here. That December a mob killed more than 500 of its people, and with the approval of King Charles IV the houses were pulled down and the ground became a marketplace. On the site of the synagogue, Charles had a church to the Virgin built, the Frauenkirche, whose dark gabled front closes the view. The fountain beside it followed in the 1380s and 1390s, a Gothic spire about 19 metres high carrying 40 painted figures and ringed by an iron grille. Alt fills the square with an ordinary day. Women stand at the basin, men in blue uniforms wait outside a shop, horses cross with a rider in green, and a small black dog trots after two children.