München - Königsplatz

The plans for the Königsplatz were drawn up by Leo von Klenze in 1812 in anticipation of Munich 's expansion. Klenze's designs reflected the ideas of Karl von Fischer, who saw in the Königsplatz a "Forum for the Arts" comparable to the "Forum for the Sciences" represented by Ludwigstrasse. The square took 50 years to complete, the final building, the Propyläen, being finished in 1862, 14 years after the abdication of King Ludwig I who originally commissioned the scheme.

Between 1933 and 1935 the appearance of the Königsplatz was completely transformed when, in the hands of the architects Paul Ludwig Troost and Leonhard Gall, the square became the National Socialists's "Akropolis Germaniae" in the so-called "Capital City of the Movement". Granite paving replaced the grass and Klenze's Neo-Classical buildings acquired a new function as the setting for huge Nazi rallies. The National Socialist headquarters in Meiserstrasse/Arcisstrasse were "incorporated" into the square by the removal of trees, the buildings in question being the "Führer's Building" (now a college of music), where the Munich Treaty was signed in 1938, the offices of the NSDAP (National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, now housing the State Graphic Collection), and two so-called "Temples of Honor", blown up in 1947 as part of the process of de-nazification. These "Temples" had replaced two Neo-Classical buildings designed by Karl von Fischer and Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

Today grass grows once more in the Königsplatz. True to its original Neo-Classical conception, the square has again taken on (since June 1988) the character of an "ancient forum", emphasised by the solitary grandeur of the three tree-framed principal buildings, the Glyptothek, Staatliche Antikensammlung and Propyläen.