New Palace
The 330m/1,083ft-long Neues Schloss (New Palace) comprises a main building with taller, triple-articulated central section, linked by arcades to lateral pavilions either side. In style it reflects
the transition from Italian to French taste and is at present painted white and gray with window frames and other decorative elements picked out in yellow.
Following his victory over the Turks in 1688 the Elector Max Emanuel, then at the height of his power, resolved to mark the fact by constructing one of the largest buildings of his time. A start was made under Enrico Zuccali in 1701-04 with the shell of the Neues Schloss, intended to be part of a great palace laid out four-square around a central courtyard (with the Altes Schloss forming the west wing). Max Emanual was forced to abandon this ambitious plan however. From 1719 work continued on a more modest scale under Joseph Effner, ceasing altogether in 1727. Almost a century later Ludwig I commissioned Leo von Klenze to alter Effner's facade, giving it strict articulation. The palace was badly damaged during the last war, but since the summer of 1972 all the rooms have again been open.
The particular charm of the beautifully designed and decorated interior (by Effner and others, 1720-26), lies in its successful mingling of Italian Late Baroque and Early Roccoco. The murals and stucco-work are full of motifs from the Turkish wars.
The fine carving on the main doors on both fronts was the work of Ignaz Günther (1736).
The following rooms are especially fine:
Entrance hall, with eight red Lake Teger marble columns and trompe-l'oeil paintings by Nikolaus Stuber in the low domes framed in stucco ornament.
Garden Room, with grisaille paintings by Stuber and stucco-work (sea-monsters) by Guiseppi Volpini.
Staircase Hall, designed by Effner, with green Brixen marble columns and Corinthian pilasters; fresco in dome "Vulkan's Forge" by C. D. Asam, stucco ornament (Turkish trophies) above the windows and doors by J. B. Zimmermann and C. Dubut.
Great Hall, rising through two storys; stucco ornament by Dubut and Zimmermann and two huge battle pictures by J. Beich; ceiling-painting "Aeneas and Turnus fighting for Princess Lavinia" by Jacopo Amigoni. The chessboard floor is of Lake Teger marble.
Hall of Victories, which takes its name from nine battle pictures by Beich; the Régence decoration of this former dining-room makes it one of the finest Baroque rooms.
Great Gallery: a Baroque gallery 61m/200ft long, originally designed to house Maximilian Emanuel's collection of pictures from the Netherlands. These are now in the Alte Pinakothek and have been replaced by other Dutch, Flemish, German and Italian works by, among others, Brueghel the Elder, Honthorst, Teniers, Tintoretto and Veronese.
To right and left of the Great Gallery, overlooking the garden, are magnificent staterooms, the Elector's embellished with white and gold paneling and the Electress's decorated in silver and blue. Noteworthy even in these extraordinarily sumptuous rooms are the Brussels tapestries by J. d. Vos (1724) with scenes of military campaigns; also the ceiling fresco in the dining-room of Odysseus's captivity by the nymph Calypso (C. Wink, 1772), and the Scagliola wall-covering in the Kammerkapelle. The rooms beneath on the ground floor, formerly the apartments of the Prince and Princess Electors, now house a gallery of European Baroque painting.
The Maximilianskapelle was the work of Joseph Effner. Extending upwards through each of the storys, it has a fine ceiling fresco by C. D. Asam. The box seating behind the windows on the east side was for members of the Court.
Altes Schloss
The Altes Schloss is an unpretentious country manor with two corner turrets and a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. Badly damaged by fire in 1944, the exterior was restored after the war
(work completed in 1972). At the rear is a courtyard with old trees, from which a gatehouse gives access to the domestic offices of Wilhelm V's original house.
An exhibition "Das Evangelium in den Wohnungen der Völker" (The Gospel in the Homes of the People; Gertrud Weinhold Collection) can be seen inside the Altes Schloss.
Schleissheim Park
Schleissheim Park was laid out in 1720 to plans by D. Girard, its dimensions (1250 by 350m/1,370 by 380yd) having been set considerably earlier, in 1684, by the construction of Schloss Lustheim -
as a "point de vue" - and the two lateral canals. Together with the parks at Herrenhausen in Hannover and Veitshöchheim near Würzburg, Schleissheim is one of the few Baroque gardens in Germany to have survived in its original state. In front of the Neues Schloss lies a parterre (renewed in about 1830), with two fountains and a cascade (1724); beyond this are two square gardens enclosed by hedges and beyond these again, in the center of the park, is a circular garden. A canal runs the whole length down the middle of the park, dividing at its farther end to form a ring around Lustheim. Beautiful avenues of limes border the garden on either side. The statuary unfortunately has disappeared.
Schloss Lustheim
Older than the Neues Schloss, this small yellow and white palace at the far end of Schleissheim park was built in 1684-88 by Enrico Zuccali on the occasion of the marriage of the Elector Max
Emanuel to Maria Antonia, daughter of Leopold I, Emperor of Austria. Built in the architectural style of an Italian garden palace, it stands on a circular island ringed by a canal, the intention undoubtedly being to recreate Cythera, legendary island of love and happiness. On the north side of the palace stand what were once stables for the Electoral couple's horses, to the south the former Renatius Chapel, also by Zuccali. These two buildings were apparently linked at one time by semi-circular arcades with an orangery in the middle, but today there is only a hedge.
The ground floor of the palace is laid out with a main hall extending up through the floor above, and 12 smaller rooms. The hall is noteworthy for its fine ceiling painting by F. Rosa, G. Turbillo and J. A. Gumpp celebrating Diana, Goddess of Hunting, and also its six large paintings of Maximilian's Court at the hunt.
Ernst Schneider Collection of Meissen Porcelain
Ten ground floor rooms and four rooms on the lower ground floor of Shloss Lustheim today house Ernst Schneider's superb collection of Meissen porcelain, installed here in 1971. Displayed in 56
cabinets are Johann Friedrich Böttger's first experiments with stoneware and more than 1,800 other exhibits arranged chronologically and thematically, ranging in date from 1710, when the Meissen manufactory was established, to the Seven Years War (1756-63). The magnificent collection, accumulated by Schneider over a period of 50 years, is surpassed only by that in Dresden's Zwinger.
Among the finest of the items are the large Augustus Rex vases, the Elephant Candelabra (1735), the wildlife pieces by the great master J. J. Kändler (1706-75), particularly his gaily colored birds, examples of the massive dinner-services which were supplied to the Courts of Europe, painted by J. G. Höroldt (1696-1775), pieces from the "Möllendorf" service designed by Friedrich the Great, and Count Brühl's famous "Swan Service".
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