In 1655 the city council gave the task of the construction to Pieter Post, the apprentice of Jacob van Campen, a architect of great renown and designer of the palaces of the House of Orange-Nassau.

The choice of the in North Holland born Pieter Post as architect can be seen as sign of the increasing influence of the States General of the Netherlands in Maastricht.

The five story town hall (including the basement and loft) is finished with a sloped roof made out of slate from which a 25 meter high tower arises.

A almost exact copy of the tower of the town hall of Maastricht can be found at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius near Moscow as the so called Ducktower.

He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernised and based on the Enlightenment.