The Würzburg Residence and Court Gardens [antikvár]

Architectural and Artistic SignificanceUnlike the royal Residence in Munich, which evolved over some five hundred years and thus incorporates the styles of quite different periods, the Wiirzburg Residence was built almost within a single generation. The significance of this great building is not therefore the vertical line of tradition, but rather the homogeneity of its style, the horizontal coherence and the breadth of artistic vision. The architects in fact drew their inspiration from an area extending from Vienna to Paris and from Genoa and Venice to Amsterdam. The building embodies the attainments of Western architecture of its day, the foremost contemporary trends in French château architecture, Viennese imperial baroque and the religious and secular architecture of northern Italy, and is a synthesis of the arts of astonishing universality. No palace or castle, either in Germany or in the Latin countries, can surpass the Wiirzburg Residence for its masterful combination of many different western styles. Major artists from the principal artistic regions of Europe collaborated on the building. The Wiirzburg court architect, Balthasar Neumann, who was entrusted with the coordination of the building plans, had to work not only with the leading German and French architects such as the imperial court architect in Vienna, Lucas von Hildebrandt, the architect of the Elector of Mainz, Maximilian von Welsch, as well as the haughty Robert de Cotte, architecte du Roy et inspecteur general, und Germain Boffrand in Paris, but also with artists such as Antonio Bossi, the ornamental genius of the Wiirzburg Residence, the gifted sculptors and woodcarvers Johann Wolfgang van der Auvera from it must surely be the most beautiful (palace) in Germany. The staircase is wonder-ful.Margravine Wilhelmine of BayreuthWew of the Imperial Hall pavilion of the Residence from the East Garden