Besides the old ducal palace, laid in ruins by the French in 1794, but restored in 1846, the secular buildings comprise the government offices, the postoffice in Italian style, the town hall on the market square, the law courts, the municipal music hall, the municipal theatre, the assembly hall of the Rhenish provincial diet, an Italian Renaissance edifice erected in 1879, the academy of art (1881; in pure Renaissance), the industrial art museum (1896), the historical museum, and the industrial art school.
Despite the dismal surroundings Cy's band drew an enormous following from, initially, art school students with a distinctly Bohemian bent.
Basil Beattie remembering the pleasure of learning to make a lithograph in art school in the 50's.
Both the Athenaeum and the Working Men's College were in decline and Mander's Art School continued to struggle in a financial morass.
There is an art school in the town.
