Bronze Wittelsbach Fountain - München, Germany - Fountains on Waymarking.com

The Residenz in central Munich is the former royal palace of the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria. The Residenz is the largest city palace in Germany and is today open to visitors for its architecture, room decorations, and displays from the former royal collections.

The octagonal Brunnenhof served as a place for tournaments before the large Wittelsbach Fountain was erected in the middle of the courtyard in 1610. The bronze group represents the four elements and the four principal rivers of Bavaria and, above, the brass figure of Otto von Wittelsbach in full armour, the founder of the former Kingdom of Bavaria.

With over forty bronze sculptures from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Residence Museum is presenting one of the richest collections of European bronze art from the Mannerism and early Baroque eras. Today the bronze gods and heroes that once decorated the gardens, fountains and façades of the Residence have been replaced with copies. Since 2015 the precious originals have been displayed in the early Baroque rooms on the ground floor of the building on the north-west side of the Imperial Courtyard.

At the time they were created, these expensive sculptures, which were very complicated to produce, were an effective symbol of princely prestige. The bronzes in the Residence Museum such as the demigod Perseus, the figures of the Wittelsbach Fountain and the so-called Tellus Bavarica were powerful illustrations of the Wittelsbachs’ ambitions in the age of the Counter-Reformation and on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. They still evoke one of the most formative epochs of Bavarian history.

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Date Logged Log User Rating   02/18/2018 ITS6 visited it