Historisches Rathaus der Stadt Köln

This guide to the Historisches Rathaus in Cologne opens in thirteen ninety-six, when a new charter called the Verbundbrief stripped the city's ruling merchant families of power and handed it to twenty-two trade guilds. It follows the guilds as they fund a sixty-one-meter tower to hold the city's money and charters, taller than anything nearby but the cathedral, and points out a small carved mask on its face aimed squarely at the families they replaced. Look closely among its hundred-plus statues of emperors and saints to find it.