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Historic Window 7
Later a small structure, the North Building, was added on the Rhine-facing side of the stepped gable of the toll house. After the destruction of the whole site during the Boppard War in the summer of 1497, it was restored in 1498 (d). With the reconstruction of the whole site after the damage in the War of the Grand Alliance in 1694 and 1695 (d), the North Building gained this big room. Its beamed ceiling is fixed to a kingpost truss in the roof, which can be viewed during a special tour.
‘Cologne Ceilings’ are stuccoed beamed ceilings, whereby the visible ceiling beams and girders are covered with render and there is a semi-circular canopy between the respective beams. Between the ceiling beams there is a substructure of wooden poles covered with lime straw mortar. Split rods with a layer of light clay render were nailed to the beams with hand-forged nails. On top of this a lime plaster was used as a finishing coat, which had animal hair added to it to stabilise it. A thin layer of very fine-grained limestone sand forms the top coat. The uneven pattern of the stucco mouldings shows that these were made on-site with a profile template.
Cologne Ceilings were very popular from the first half of the 17th century until the first third of the 18th century. The largest cohesive ensemble of early Cologne stucco ceilings in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley is preserved here.