Exterior view

From the 1770s, numerous authors wrote analyses of the problems of urban development and thus helped to propagate new qualities of middle-class life in the cities. Though the ideal remains the detached house looking like a miniature Schloss, people were aware that urban residences could not start and finish with this model and other models needed to be found. Baroque towns had been constructed according to a uniform plan, and now the desire was to see a succession of varied houses that, though they would be subject to the overall plan, would not surrender their individuality.

Distinguished and elegant villas were built in a very reduced plain style by Peter Joseph Krahe for middle-class clients inBraunscweig. Thanks to the scrupulous balance of proportions, the Villa Salve Hospes, built for the merchant Krause on the site of a former bastion, offers a touch of grandeur despite the very restrained use of decoration and traditional architectural trappings of dignity, and despite the small lunettes in the roof.