The "Ehrenhalle" was built by the city of Nuremberg according to a plan of German architect Fritz Mayer. It was inaugurated in 1930, before the Hitler era during the Weimar Republic. It is an arcaded hall with an adjacent cobbled stone terrace with two rows of pedestals for fire bowls. All fourteen pylons remain virtually intact and have not been ignited since the final Nazi party rally in September 1938. Originally the hall was to be a memorial site for the 9,855 soldiers from Nuremberg who were fallen in World War I.

During the Party Congress of 1929 the then unfinished "Hall of Honour" was used for the enactment of a cult of the dead by the National Socialists the first time. During the Third Reich the Nazis used the site primarily as a commemoration for the fallen soldiers of World War I and commemoration of the 16 dead of the "Hitlerputsch" (the so-called "Martyrs of the NS Movement") (Beer Hall Putsch) on 9 November 1923 in Munich. Hitler, accompanied by SS-leader Heinrich Himmler and SA-leader Viktor Lutze, strode through the arena over the 240 meters long granite path from the main grandstand to the terrace of the Ehrenhalle and showed the Nazi salute there. The ritual was the climax of the celebration.