Inhalt
The State and its Inhabitants
Art Treasures and Museums
You can find art wherever you go in Bavaria. Majestic castles and palaces and magnificent cathedral dominate the skylines everywhere in Bavaria. The museums in Bavaria are home to art treasures from every corner of the world, from every age and from every style.
There are more than 100,000 architectural monuments and more than 1,200 museums and collections in Bavaria. Every year the Bavarian castles, palaces and museums attract over 20 million visitors. The overwhelming diversity of the works of art has made Bavaria a major destination for all art lovers.
Of course, this rich artistic heritage brings major obligations with it. The annual budget of the Bavarian Free State earmarks approximately half a million Euros for art and culture, of which 35 million Euros goes on the preservation of historical monuments.
Buildings of international artistic importance can be found in all parts of Bavaria. To start with there is Bamberg Cathedral, a major example of Romanesque architecture, founded more than a thousand years ago by Emperor Heinrich II. Bamberg Cathedral also contains one of the most famous German works of art, the Horseman of Bamberg.
The Church of St Laurence in Nuremberg is the first of a series of major Gothic cathedrals in Bavaria, culminating in the Church of Our Lady, Munich Cathedral. A pearl of Augsburg, the city of the Fuggers, is the impressive Town Hall, one of the most important Renaissance buildings north of the Alps. Baroque architecture flowered in all its splendour in Bavaria, from the monumental Residence in Würzburg designed by Balthasar Neumann to the innumerable Baroque and Rococo country churches, of which the Wies Church is one of the most famous.
The Valhalla near Regensburg, a temple commemorating important personalities, owes its existence to King Ludwig I's passion for Greece, while the Castle of Neuschwanstein is an expression of the fairy-tale world of his grandson Ludwig II. A prime example of modern architecture is the Munich Olympic Centre, whose daring constructions include the largest tent roof in the world.
Bavaria's museums are veritable treasure houses. The picture galleries of the Old and the New Pinakothek in Munich are among the most important in the world and include paintings by Dürer, Rembrandt, Caspar David Friedrich and other major artists.
The National Museum of German Art and Culture in Nuremberg is the largest museum of art history in Germany with a comprehensive collection from ancient history to the present day. Recently further stars have appeared in the heavens of Bavarian Museums, for example the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt, the New Museum in Nuremberg, the Museum of Imagination in Bernried on Lake Starnberg, and the Pinakothek of Modern Art in Munich. At present another museum is being constructed next to the Pinakothek of Modern Art to house the Brandhorst Collection with its important works of contemporary art.
