Pharmacy

The reconstructed „Adler Pharmacy“ symbolises the varied history
of the house on Hühnermarkt.

After acquiring the grounds in 1662, the apothecary Adam Coebergh with the help of the council founded the Adler Pharmacy
in the „Coeberghisches Stockhaus“. The pharmacy remained in the
family for more than four generations. Martin Jakob Coebergh consigned the pharmacy to his associate, Andreas Monheim, who
had come from Cologne to Aachen in 1781. In 1783, Monheim acquired the Coebergh House and, maintaining the old construction, had it renovated by Jakob Couven in 1786. The son
of the famous architect and town planner Johann Joseph Couven,
created a town house with a five-fold axial facade in the typical combination of bluestone and brick here at the medieval location of the city scales.

The „Adler Pharmacy“ remained in the Monheim family until the
end of the 19th century. From 1857 the pharmacy not only
produced drugs and medicines, but also chocolate; an Italian
chocolatier produced up to 400 bars of chocolate a day. Among the furnishing and fittings of the pharmacy were not only mortars, pestles, scales and pharmaceutical vessels (for example, Italian majolicas – albarelli – from the 17th and 18th
centuries) but also an astronomical clock with the signature „Joh. Schmits, Horloger A Aix la Chapelle“.

The Delft tiled fresco has the central theme of the VOC (United East Indian Company) which, founded in 1602, existed until 1795 and transported coffee, tea and chocolate – amongst many other goods – to Europe.