On Saturday a group of us went downtown to tour the Munich Residence, the home of the Bavarian Nobility starting in the 1100's or so and running up to the abolition of the monarchy in 1918. This place was a palace. I had walked by one of the sides a couple times before:
Before going in we took a brief stroll around the gardens outside the Residence, which were, unfortunately though understandable, not yet nice and green, all the way over to this memorial to Bavaria's fallen in the World Wars:
"They will rise again"
"Built by Munich (something along these lines) for the 13,000 fallen heroes and sons from the City of Munich 1914 - 1918"
All this was out in front of the Federal Building in Munich:
On to the Residence.
The Residence was constructed in parts over the course of the reigns of the various kings, dukes, and electors of Bavaria. Partially destroyed in the war, most of the palace has been restored with varying degrees of completeness. For example, there were a series of rooms depicting the seasons, elements, or some other set of things in ceiling paintings. The ceilings center painting was usually the focal point and depicted most clearly the rooms theme. Each of the center paintings in all of these "themed" rooms were beyond restoration and today only blank spaces remain:
Schade. What a pity.
Much of the palace survived the war or was reconstructed faithfully in the 1950's and 60's. These rooms were magnificent.
This long hallway is the "Antiquarium". It had a bunch of busts of, from what I could tell, Caesars:
Another hallway was lined with portraits of the various off-shoots of the royal family tree:
Included among those family roots was buddy Charlemagne. He was a Frank.
They also really really loved porcelain, for some reason. There were several rooms devoted to displaying the royal collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain. Apparently the Europeans couldn't figure out how to make it for a long while and the Asian imports became quite valuable. Here's a cool thing:
To think that people lived in this place once! Crazy! In addition to the Residence is the treasury, but we didn't have time to go in and check it out. I'll do that later though; don't you worry.
On Sunday I went to the Alte Pinakothek with Sam and a bunch of folks from his Bible study. The guy who leads it gave us a little tour; it was pretty cool and very interesting. I probably would not have paid as close attention if I were there on my own and that would have been a terrible shame as late medieval artwork has a lot of really cool detailed scenes. A lot of the times they will tell a story (like the life of Christ, for example) by combining images altogether on the canvas or by depicting a large image (like the healing of a crippled man) with the late outcome in the background (the man walking down the stairs out of the cathedral). I liked it a lot.
The Alte Pinakothek is one of three, alongside the Neue Pinakothek and the Pinakothek der Moderne. I will get to all of them eventually, especially after seeing how impressive the Alte was.
I saw Albrecht Dürer's self-portrait! I looked him right in the eyes.
So that's it, my weekend. This week I begin a little bit of the JYM orientation using my vacation time from work, which is alright since the orientation is only half the day and I'll get to meet all the new kids. Now I'm off to either meet some of them or do some St. Patricks day stuff. We'll see.
Toodles.
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