In 1291, Bernkastel was granted town charter at the instigation of the Archbishop of Trier, Boemund I. The first town hall was probably built shortly afterwards. Today's town hall façade is a magnificent work of the German late Renaissance by the Trier sculptor R. H. Hoffmann (built in 1608).
Hoffmann's patron and patron was the then Archbishop Lothar von Metternich (1599 - 1623), whose coat of arms adorns the town hall bay besides the Kurtric cross and the Bernkasteler coat of arms. The oriel rests on a basalt column and carries a stone figure of the Salvator mundi, the Redeemer of the World with the globe, on the baroque curved roof. With its market gable, the town hall is a jewel of architecture. On the left cornerstone of the façade on the ground floor is still visible the pillory on which the perpetrators were bound to the public pillory with chains and handcuffs.