Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt
in pixels

About Nuremberg Christkindlesmarkt

The Christkindlesmarkt fills the Hauptmarkt, the main market square in the middle of Nuremberg’s old town, for the four weeks of Advent. More than 160 wooden stalls with red-and-white cloth roofs stand in tight rows across the square, which is why it is called the “little town of wood and cloth”. In 2025 there were 168 stalls in all, 140 of them on the Hauptmarkt and 23 in the Market of the Sister Cities on the Rathausplatz next door, and the market drew more than two million visitors in 2024.

A Christmas fair on the Hauptmarkt can be traced back to the middle of the 17th century. The oldest written proof is an inscription of 1678 on the bottom of a small painted wooden box, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, which records that the box was sent as a gift “zum Kindles-Marck”, for the Christ Child’s market. The market lost importance in the 19th century and moved several times; it was revived on the Hauptmarkt in 1933, when the Nazis used it for propaganda, and did not take place during the Second World War. It returned in 1948 among the ruins of the old town.

The market is strict about tradition: plastic fir garlands, piped music and fairground rides are banned, and the city awards prizes for the best-decorated stalls. The stalls sell Nuremberg Lebkuchen, gingerbread in round tins, fruit bread, gold-foil angels, cribs, toys and Zwetschgenmännle, little figures made of dried prunes. Nuremberg Rostbratwurst, small grilled sausages, come three in a bun, and the Glühwein is served in a ceramic deposit mug with that year’s date on it.

Since 1948 the market has been opened by the Nuremberg Christkind, who recites a prologue written by Friedrich Bröger from the gallery of the Frauenkirche, the Gothic church on the east side of the square, built in 1352–62. Since 1969 the Christkind has been a young woman from Nuremberg aged 16 to 19, elected every two years. Above the gallery, the Männleinlaufen clock of 1509 sends the seven electors round Emperor Charles IV every day at noon, and in the north-west corner of the square stands the Schöner Brunnen, a gilded and painted Gothic fountain about 19 metres high, built in 1385–96.

The diorama

The diorama sets the Hauptmarkt on a snowy floating island, built in Three.js and rendered as pixel art: the scene is drawn at a low resolution, every edge gets a dark outline, the colours are reduced to a small palette, and the result is scaled up without smoothing. Rows of wooden stalls with red-and-white striped roofs, fir garlands and lights fill the square: Lebkuchen stalls with gingerbread hearts and stacks of round tins, toy stalls, Glühwein stands with their mugs, prune-men stalls and bratwurst grills sending up smoke, with strings of lights over the aisles.

On the east side the Frauenkirche turns its stepped west gable to the square, with pinnacles and blind tracery, the Männleinlaufen clock with the emperor and his electors, and the porch with its gallery, where the Christkind stands in a gold robe and crown above a crowd looking up at her. In the north-west corner the Schöner Brunnen rises in gilded tiers behind its wrought-iron grille, and the square is ringed by rebuilt old-town houses with red sandstone ground floors, half-timbered upper floors, steep roofs and big dormers. At night the church is floodlit, the stalls glow and a glint catches the Christkind’s crown.

Things to spot

• The Christkind on the church gallery and the crowd gathered below her
• Smoke rising from the bratwurst grills
• Gingerbread hearts hanging at the Lebkuchen stalls
• Shoppers holding Glühwein mugs in blue, red and white
• The emperor on his throne in the Männleinlaufen clock
• The gilded Schöner Brunnen in the corner of the square

What we simplified

• The Hauptmarkt is about 100 by 80 metres; here it is compressed to about 40 by 32 metres.
• There are about 30 stalls in the diorama instead of around 140 on the real Hauptmarkt (168 in the whole market), and the Market of the Sister Cities next door is not shown.
• The Christkind stands on the gallery all the time; in reality she speaks from it once, at the opening, and then visits the market and the children’s Christmas.
• The houses round the square are generic Nuremberg houses, not the actual buildings, and the snow is added for the winter look.