Berlin's city hall, a large red brick building with an impressive tower is known as the Rotes Rathaus or Red Town Hall. The nineteenth-century building is situated on the southeast side of the Alexanderplatz.In front of the Rotes Rathaus is a large Baroque fountain, the Neptunbrunnen.The current structure with its eye-catching tower is the fifth town hall built at this site, where the original town hall was erected in the thirteenth century. The large structure was built between 1861 and 1867 and replaced an earlier city hall that had become too small for the growing metropolis. The German architect Hermann Friedrich Waesemann was responsible for its North-Italian High Renaissance style design, a style that is quite unusual for Berlin. The design of the city hall's iconic tower was clearly inspired by the towers of the Gothic Laon Cathedral in France.The long frieze on the facade was added between 1876 and 1879. Thirty-six terra-cotta panels depict scenes from the history of Berlin.