Astonishing Middle Ages
Sheltered by crenellated ramparts, covered walkways and high watchtowers, many towns have preserved their typically medieval urban layout, with narrow, cobbled streets leading to squares and squares, providing the backdrop for elegant, often half-timbered houses with high gables and mansard roofs. Town halls, a testament to the growing power of autonomous cities, were the flagship buildings of the period, and were the focus of much decorative attention, particularly in the Gothic style. Arcades, ogival vaults and geminated bays are among the most common features. Many of these medieval cities are also overlooked by a fortress, which, behind powerful fortifications, deploys a multi-court structure. Among Bavaria's most stunning fortresses, don't miss Burghausen. With its 1051 m of ramparts, it is one of the longest in Europe... and one of the most elaborate too. Just look at its string of 6 inner courtyards separated by 3 drawbridges! Dinkelsbühl also impresses, with its high walls punctuated by huge gates and some twenty towers, and its deep moat. Bamberg and Rothenburg are among the best-preserved medieval towns in Europe. Rothenburg, in particular, is full of elegant medieval houses whose gilded signs are a reminder that they were once home to large craft guilds. But one of the most beautiful medieval houses is to be found in Nuremberg. This is the House of Albrecht Dürer, with its elegant half-timbering and generous canopy adorning its gabled facade. The old town of Landshut, which boasts one of the most beautiful and vast medieval squares (600 m long, after all!), is also home to houses decorated with interesting sgraffito, a decoration obtained by impregnating the surface with color, then coating it with a white mortar that is scraped and incised to reveal the underlying color in the desired pattern. These medieval towns are home to other superb witnesses to this era: religious buildings. The Romanesque style, with its semicircular arches and sober ornamentation, gave way to the Gothic style, which exploded in Bavaria in all its flamboyance, contributing to the rethinking of some of the original Romanesque buildings. Such is the case of Augsburg's Mariendom, a great Romanesque basilica with 5 naves transformed into a Gothic jewel with bronze portals, a powerful, slender bell tower and a cloister with elegant colonnades. But the finest representatives of this Bavarian Gothic style are undoubtedly the Frauenkirche in Munich and Nuremberg. The former is an immense brick edifice (109 m long and 40 m wide) whose slender bulb-capped towers overlook the city. The second is astonishing for the almost pyramidal movement created by its multi-gabled facade. Hall churches, consisting of 3 naves of equal height, are also common in Bavaria, as evidenced by the beautiful St. George's Church in Nördlingen, with its 90 m high steeple reaching for the heavens. Pilgrimage churches, such as St. Mary's in Laudenbach, are designed to attract and guide the faithful. The abbeys dotting Bavaria, such as Kaishem Abbey, are no strangers to architectural power, having gone from Cistercian rigor to Gothic flamboyance to Baroque decor!
From Renaissance to Baroque
In contrast to the dominant Gothic style, the Renaissance was only modestly employed in Bavaria. Augsburg is home to a superb example: the Fugger family's residence, known as the Fuggerhäuser, with its beautiful arcaded courtyard inspired by Tuscan palaces. But it was above all the prolific Baroque period that helped give Bavaria its unique, grandiose face. Baroque illustrates the powerful links that had been forged between southern Germany and Upper Italy, with artists and craftsmen willingly crossing the border to exchange techniques and know-how. Bavaria entered a period of architectural splendor, with a profusion of gold, stucco, trompe-l'œil and convex and concave motifs creating astonishing effects of movement. A style perfectly suited to the staging of power, as evidenced by the sumptuous palaces of the period. Munich's Schloss des Nymphes, which still retains the harmonious features of a Palladian Renaissance, paved the way for the Baroque effervescence of which the Würzburg Residenz is one of the jewels. See the double-revolution grand staircase and the frescoes by the famous Italian artist Gian Battista Tiepolo adorning the vaults of the Imperial Hall. The Résidence d'Ansbach with its mirror cabinet and 2,800 majolica tiles is another proud representative of this decorative effusion, as is Schleissheim Castle with its stuccoed Lustheim Pavilion. Under the Wittelsbach dynasty, then at the height of their power, an artistic tradition developed that is still renowned in Bavaria today: the Lüftmalerei, which consists of painting and decorating the facades of houses, which are then transformed into "illustrated pages of a great stone book" recounting the religious, political and cultural history of Bavaria. Giant trompe-l'œil, illuminations and other calligraphic devices lavishly adorn the houses ofOberammergau. The Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, the only fully-preserved example of court opera architecture, is the culmination of this art of staging. Its sandstone facade was designed as a central, focal point of the city, while the interior features an astonishing bell-shaped hall with several tiers of boxes, including the courtyard box with its highly decorated half-timbered structure. This decorative profusion was taken a step further by the Rococo period, as illustrated by the ballroom with its incredible chandeliers and gilding in the Palais Schaezler in Augsburg and the small church of St. John Nepomuk in Munich. Among the great figures of the period, three architects shone particularly brightly: Dominikus Zimmermann, who designed the parish church of Our Lady of Günsburg and the decorations on the façade of the Landsberg-am-Lech town hall (of which he was mayor!); Balthazar Neumann, who built a number of castles in Franconia and designed the grandiose Neresfeld Abbey Church, with its domes featuring an astonishing play of colors; and last but not least, Elias Holl, a visionary architect who, with the Augsburg Town Hall, created one of the first buildings with more than 6 storeys, which some even call a Baroque "skyscraper". Holl was also responsible for one of Augsburg's first "social housing" projects, the Fuggerei, a neighborhood of small 3-room (including bathroom!) detached houses for bank employees who had financed Charles V's election. With its ingenious water management system, created as early as the 14th century and perfected in subsequent centuries, its network of canals and water towers and its 3 monumental fountains, Augsburg was at the cutting edge of innovation!
Romanticism and eclecticism
It was during the reign of Ludwig I of Bavaria that the region began to adorn itself with its romantic finery. Intent on transforming Munich into a veritable European metropolis, he laid out new streets and avenues, including the famous Ludwigstrasse, which he lined with an incredible array of buildings drawing on Romanesque, Gothic and even Byzantine and Hellenistic styles. Imitating the Arch of Constantine in Rome, the Siegestor closes the perspective of this triumphal way, while not far away the Feldernhall stands as a replica of the famous Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. Louis I's show of power also included the enlargement of the Palais Royal, which he multiplied by a factor of 4! Louis I also borrowed from Antiquity, as illustrated by the Walhalla near Regensburg, a replica of the Parthenon dedicated to the nation's great men, or the Place Royale with its Ionian temple and the propylaea of the Glyptotheca. His son Maximilian II was to perpetuate this recourse to the past, as evidenced by Maximilianstrasse and its neo-Tudor buildings, the medieval style brought over from England. This romantic taste was to be taken to the extreme by Ludwig II of Bavaria. With his famous castles, this powerless king recreated the grandeur he would have liked to embody. Ludwig II honed his taste for Romanticism atHohenschwangau Castle, built by his father and where he spent 17 years of his life. A blend of medieval Romanticism and the influence of Tudor England, this fortress built on the ruins of a burg inspired Ludwig II to build his own castles... some of which he entrusted to theatrical decorators! Neuschwanstein , a monumental medieval castle clinging to a rocky spur at an altitude of over 1,000 m, is particularly impressive for its Hall of the Master Singers, whose spruce-wood ceiling ensures perfect acoustics.. It was at his request that the Bayreuth Festspielhaus was built, with its famous stage leading up to the auditorium - even though Ludwig II, faced with recriminations from his bankers, eventually gave up financing the project, which cost a staggering sum!). The nearby Pont Marie offers a breathtaking view of the castle, and proves just how much thought the sovereign put into staging the architecture. Linderhof is without doubt Louis II's most lavishly decorated palace. This reproduction of the Petit Trianon, a folly of color, stucco and gilding, is set in a park from which emerge the Grotto of Venus and the Moorish Pavilion with its famous Peacock Throne. Finally, don't miss Herrenchiemsee, Ludwig II's last castle, which remained unfinished after his death. Built on an island in the middle of the Chiemsee, the castle is an astonishing imitation of Versailles. Its monumental pool and Hall of Mirrors (5 m longer than the original) are a must! This highly Wagnerian romanticism, understood as particularly theatrical, then gave way to a somewhat more measured eclecticism, which gradually opened up to modernity, notably Art Nouveau and Art Deco. In Munich, the Villa Stuck is a good example of the concept of the total work of art advocated by Art Nouveau. The villa is the work of painter Franz Von Stuck, who combined antique, Byzantine, Renaissance and Jugendstil influences in a curvaceous, voluptuous design. Bayreuth's Villa Wahnfried and Augsburg's synagogue, meanwhile, combine past styles with the clean, modern lines of Art Deco.
Modern and contemporary architecture
Nuremberg is a surprising city for anyone interested in 20th-century history. The city is home to the remains of the Reichsparteitagsgelände, the site of the former Nazi Congress Palace. Hitler commissioned his famous architect Albert Speer to design a monumental stone amphitheatre, a huge horseshoe-shaped granite amphitheatre with a triumphal road leading to it, and a gigantic suspended roof. However, during the construction phase (which was never completed), major events were held in the Espace Zeppelin, where part of the columned portico that bordered the vast 350 m-long central grandstand still stands. Hitler's intention to make the city the focal point of his ideology led to its near-destruction by Allied forces. Where some German cities have opted to wipe the slate clean and embrace modernity, the authorities decided to restore Nuremberg's medieval identity. In all, some 188 German architects studied the plans of the medieval city in detail, reconstructing its layout of small, highly fragmented units. Steeply pitched roofs with 2 or 3 rows of mansard-roofed windows and elegantly crafted corbels adorned the facades of sandstone and wood houses, or brick and colored plaster for those that were completely rebuilt. To see it with the patina of time, you'd be hard-pressed to tell that the city is only 77 years old!
The organization of the 1972 Olympic Games brought a wind of architectural innovation to Munich. In the northern suburbs, an astonishing district was built on wooded hills, the landscaping of spoil heaps created by bombing and reconstruction. At the foot of these hills, architects Frei Otto and Günter Behnisch imagined the incredible Olympic complex, whose 3 buildings are united under a veil of glass suspended from metal masts. At 75,000m2, it is one of the largest roofs in the world! At the same time, Bavaria's most famous brand, BMW, had its headquarters tower built, recognizable by its 4 vertical cylinders positioned in a square, symbolizing the mechanical cylinders of a piston engine. This was followed by astonishing towers such as those of the HypoVereinsBank headquarters, with a structure as if lashed to metal pillars. But at 146 m, it's the Hoch Haus Uptown München that holds the record for the city's tallest tower! True to its reputation as a cultural center, Munich is home to museums with resolutely contemporary silhouettes. Among these treasures, don't miss : the New Pinakothek and its glass rotunda; the Brandhorst Museum, covered with 36,000 ceramic slats in 23 different colors; the Munich Jewish Museum, an astonishing transparent cube supported by a tufa wall ; and, of course, the new BMW complex, comprising the museum, whose clean lines are inspired by kinetics, and the BMW Welt Showroom, whose cloud-shaped roof, 180 m long, 130 m wide and 28 m high, and covered with 3,660 photovoltaic panels, was designed by the renowned CoopHimmelb(l)au agency. The showroom was conceived in the run-up to the 2006 World Cup, when theAllianz Arena, looking like a gigantic pneumatic tire, was the star attraction. Today, another arena project is about to see the light of day, a venue designed to host carbon-neutral events. It's an ecological project that extends the commitment of a green city that has never forgotten its identity as a small hamlet surrounded by nature!
