The courtyard of the Handel House

When medical attendant (surgeon) Georg Händel bought the representative corner house "The yellow Deer" in 1666, close to the ducal residence at the cathedral square,  it certainly looked back on an already long history. The desire of the ever and anon changing proprietors to always be à la mode resulted in numerous edificial alterations. Today the visitor can only guess how the façade and inside must have looked like during and shortly after the utilisation by the Handel Family. Later on, the installation of shops into the house lead to severe disturbances of it’s appearance.  The perron and the wide doorway had to disappear. In 1937 the city of Halle acquired the house at the corner of the Große Nikolai- and Kleine Ulrichstraße to set up a museum within the premises. Unfortunately, this project could only be realised after the World War. On the occasion of the Handel jubilee in 1985 the Handel House was extended for the first time. This enlargement had become urgently necessary due to the fact that the land bordering in the east was added to the Handel House, which not only benefited the museum area (a newly conceived exhibition about work and life of our composer and since 1989 in the upper story an overview about the city of Halle’s musical history) but also the restoration workshop and the library in the sidewing, which obtained a lot more favourable conditions then before. Moreover, better opportunities and locations for events resulted from the enlargement. Due to the gained space, a chamber music salon was accommodated on the ground floor, which formerly had to house under the roof. During summer, two courtyards serve as a wonderful venue for open-air concerts. A café and the Romanesque rests of a vault basement can perfectly be used for discussions, conversation and colloquies within a small circle of people.  In addition, the house and its gastronomy is open daily till midnight for every guest of the Handel Festival, as a place to meet and as an "oasis". Visitors of the 50th Handel Festival see the again by one more building expanded Handel House as the center of a newly constituted "Isle of Music", which closely interconnects the major Institutions of Music of the city of Halle, such as the "Institut für Musikwissenschaft" (Institute of Musicology) of the Martin Luther University and the "Evangelische Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Halle" (College of Evangelic Church Music).