Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose.

Unfortunately, the stadium itself wasn’t open on the day I was there, but my first siting of its interior was of this group of people standing on its roof!

I poked my phone inside the iron gates to get a look at the stadium

I’m going to be back soon with the final installment of this great park. Auf Wiedersehen!

Some places are just too photogenic to resist. The day I spent walking around the site of the 1972 Olympics in Munich is one of those places. It was an early autumn day and very cool, but even still, my camera would not stop popping.

One of the places I enjoyed seeing the most was the inside of the swimming hall. It was very warm inside, which may have been part of the appeal?!

Back outside there was more to see.

Now let’s look at some facts and figures:

I’ll be posting part 2 of this visit soon. Hint: lots of photos of the beautiful rolling grounds.

One of the most widely known places in Munich is the large and lovely Englischer Garten. Laid out by an English horticulturalist in the natural style as opposed to the formal French style, it is a nice place to wander through on a hot day, and now that fall is in the air, I can confirm that the autumn is fine there as well.

People swim in the water and play volleyball and other sports on the grass.

It has a famous beer garden around the Chinese Pagoda.

And enough room for wild meadows to grow as well.

Without question, the most popular place is where the garden begins and the water rushes in. I’ve already posted about this spot in “Riding the wave” in Munich. But these are new videos, taken from within the garden on the river banks.

Below is a reminder of what the “wave” looks like from the other side.

A space ship seems to have landed on the grounds of the museum.

After a couple of hours in a museum, my goose is cooked and I can’t absorb much else. The following are random shots of other galleries within the museum that caught my eye.

Fine museum, highly recommend.

I’ll be honest with you. This museum was at the lower end of my to-do list in Munich. Above it by a lot was a visit to the Neue Pinakothek in the city. That museum is one of the most important in the world for the 18th and 19th centuries. Alas, it is closed for the time being and that just means that someday I will come back to Munich to see it and the Villa Stuck, which is also closed for now. Both museums are undergoing renovations and I can’t wait to see what they accomplish.

But, I’m interested in “modern” art to some degree (and the definition varies widely from country to country). For sure I was intrigued to see what I knew would be a fine museum in Munich.

It’s new and it’s wonderful. The central courtyard is quite impressive just architecturally speaking, as you can see.

But, let’s go to the galleries and see what we can find.

Loved this exhibition space for the color alone! I wish I had had a book of paint specimens with me, cause I’d like to use this color in some room someday. But, wait…isn’t that a Picasso or 2 or 3 over there? Let’s go see!

Uh, hello Georges Braque! Lovely to see you! I’m already in heaven.

An overview of the next wall:

Hello again Braque. Love your oval oil on canvas, cubist style painting of a Woman with a Mandolin. Fantastic. I love this kind of “modern” art. I am in good hands here.

And, for a companion piece, hello Pablo Picasso! Lovely to see you to during your early Cubist period.

And between the 2 cubist works, Picasso’s portrait bust: Head of a Woman (Fernande) in bronze.

I had an interesting moment in this gallery, because I decided to make a video of the sculpture so I could remember it in the round. I made a few attempts and the guard in this room objected. I knew it was ok to take still photos, so I didn’t think a video was against the rules. But, this guard came over to me and told me I couldn’t use flash.

That kind of experience in an art museum tends to interfere with concentration. But I was back in the zone when I turned to the next wall. 3 Picassos in a group. This is indeed a good day!

Next up, Juan Gris.

Another fabulous oil on canvas from 1922. This is the kind of art that Hitler called “degenerate.” I’m obsessed with WWII history at the moment and reading a great book: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Hitler is on my mind here in Germany. I wish he weren’t. All of the artworks in this post would have been burned by him and his cult had they been able to get their hands on them. Despicable.

I love the work of Paul Klee:

Here are a couple of close ups of this minutely painted work.

Oh, hello Henri Matisse. I do most certainly love your work!

Sometimes I take pictures of the wall labels if they are interesting to me. I find these German museums to have very thought-provoking, informational summaries that I enjoy. I can certainly relate to parts of the next label, although thank god I am not a migrant. I have left my home country, though.

S

I’m very glad that I visited this excellent museum and will be back soon with another post about what I saw during the rest of my experience there.

Here are the final images from my visit. It is always interesting to me to discover what element in a museum is going to capture my imagination on a random day. On this visit, I seemed to be beguiled by the relief sculptures as you may have guessed from my 2 earlier posts.

In the next several images, which I have indicated in marker on the photos, I was captivated by the depiction of moving liquid in these static Egyptian sculptures. Not sure what the precious liquid is that is being “offered” (?) in these tomb decorations, but I’d never noticed before that there is the attempt to showing wine/oil/water (?) in motion. That seems very radical to me.

More fascinating labels, again, I might remark in Munich: in English! Thank you! Bitte! I didn’t regret one moment of time taken to read these illustrious summaries.

Below, a 3 d illustration parked in the gallery floor. This museum knows how to capture the visitor’s attention with a variety of exhibition devices.

When I first saw the small scale models below, I first thought of Italian creche scenes. They are about the same size.

The next exhibit of the book of the dead was astounding. It is tremendously long and completely displayed. Remarkable.

Here are details from the displayed Book of the Dead. Note the depiction of moving liquid again, among other things.

A child’s sarcophagus. Always an arresting subject to think about.

I’ve seen the mummy portraits created once the Romans got involved with Egypt in many museums. Never have I seen the phenomenon better explained.

And never before have I seen an actual mummy with the portrait in place. Now it makes sense.

Isis holding Horus. I immediately thought of all the upcoming images of the Virgin and Child that will be produced in the Western world. Did they borrow this iconography?

3 columns of Egyptian manufacture. I was intrigued by the capitals. I thought of the succeeding Greek capital designs and wondered about influences, back and forth.

Anyone lucky enough to spend time in this museum is fortunate indeed. I filled out a card at the reception desk remarking on the superlative experience I had on this vacation day, when I had intended to just float through a museum without much engagement. They caught me and I’m the richer for it.

St. Johann Nepomuk, better known as the Asam Church (Asamkirche), is a Baroque church in Munich. It was built between 1733 to 1746 by a pair of brothers, sculptor Egid Quirin Asam and painter Cosmas Damian Asam, as their private church. It is considered to be one of the most important buildings of the southern German Late Baroque.

Nestled between townhouses on a lovely street in pedestrianized Munich, it would be hard to overlook.

The Baroque façade is integrated into the houses of the Sendlingerstraße and swings slightly convex outward.

The church was not commissioned, but built as a private chapel for the greater glory of God and the salvation of the builders. This allowed the Asam brothers to create whatever they wanted. For example, Egid Quirin Asam could see the altar through a window of his private house next to the church (Asamhaus). He also designed the church as a Beichtkirche (confession church) for the local youth. The small church therefore has seven confessionals with allegorical scenes.

St. Johann Nepomuk was built in a confined space, its property just 22 by 8 m. Even more astonishing is the artistry of the two builders, who were able to harmoniously unite, in a very decorative manner, in the two-story space architecture, painting, and sculpture. The indirect lighting in the choir area is especially well done: hidden behind the cornice window, the Trinity figures are illuminated effectively from behind. The cornice itself seems to swing up and down on its curved construction.

Unfortunately, visitors cannot enter the church. You can go into the vestibule, but there is a decorative wrought iron gate separating it from the nave and so my pictures were taken through the rungs of the gate.

The ceiling fresco Life of Saint Nepomuk is considered a masterpiece of Cosmas Damian Asam. The high altar of the Asam Church is framed by four Solomonic columns. These four columns at the altar recall the four Bernini columns over the grave of St. Peter in St. Peter’s in Rome. Previously, the brothers Asam had studied in Italy at the Accademia di San Luca, under Lorenzo Bernini.

At the top is God, the Saviour. Below the tabernacle, a relic of John of Nepomuk is kept. Two angels, sculpted by Ignaz Günther, flank the gallery altar and were added at a later date.

Below, a confessional: I found it to be the simplest design in the whole ensemble. It was a restful place to park your gaze for a moment.

Below, the ceiling design of the vestibule. No inch of space was left undecorated.

To me, the sculpture in the photo below seems to represent the Americas. It was a common decorative element in churches and other elaborate designs of this period to represent the 4 continents in allegorical figures. I haven’t yet taken the time to research whether I’m right.

If you visit, prepare to be overpowered!

You like chaos? Come to the Florence train station.

You like pretty scenery? Come to Tuscany!

You want to leave Italy? Fly out of Rome!

You want to arrive in the USA? Come to Chicago!

You want to lose your mind? Apply for an Elective Residency visa at the Italian consulate in Chicago.

Wish me luck!🍀

One post is not enough to cover this eccentric yet beautiful villa in the Bavarian Alps. Seeing it was a highlight of my summer in Germany.

The palace is surrounded by formal gardens that are subdivided into five sections that are decorated with allegoric sculptures of the continents, the seasons and the elements:

The northern part is characterized by a cascade of thirty marble steps. The bottom end of the cascade is formed by the Neptune fountain and at the top there is a Music Pavilion.

The center of the western parterre is formed by basin with the gilt figure of Fame. In the west there is a pavilion with the bust of Louis XIV. In front of it you see a fountain with the gilt sculpture Amor with dolphins. The garden is decorated with four majolica vases.

The crowning of the eastern parterre is a wooden pavilion containing the bust of Louis XVI. Twenty-four steps below it there is a fountain basin with a gilt sculpture Amor shooting an arrow. A sculpture of Venus and Adonis is placed between the basin and the palace.

The water parterre in front of the palace is dominated by a large basin with the gilt fountain group Flora and putti. The fountain’s water jet itself is nearly 25 meters high.

The terrace gardens form the southern part of the park and correspond to the cascade in the north. On the landing of the first flight there is the Naiad fountain consisting of three basins and the sculptures of water nymphs. In the middle arch of the niche you see the bust of Marie Antoinette of France. These gardens are crowned by a round temple with a statue of Venus formed after a painting by Antoine Watteau (The Embarkation for Cythera).

The landscape garden covers an area of about 50 hectares (125 acres) and is perfectly integrated in the surrounding natural alpine landscape. There are several buildings of different appearance located in the park.

Venus Grotto
The building is hidden under an artificial hill with a rock entrance. It is wholly artificial and was built for the king as an illustration of the First Act of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. At the beginning of the first act, Tannhäuser is in the cave of Venusberg. In keeping with the theme, the painting by August von Heckel in the background of the main grotto depicts Tannhäuser with Frau Venus.

The grotto was built under the direction of the opera set designer August Dirigl between 1875 and 1877. It is an iron construction whose partition walls were covered with impregnated canvas, which in turn was sprayed with a cement mixture from which the artificially created stalactites are made. The grotto is divided into two side grottos and a main grotto.

Seven ovens were needed to heat all of the rooms. A waterfall and a shell-shaped barge were custom-made for use in the grotto. A rainbow projection device and a wave machine completed the illusion as the king was rowed around on the artificial lake while musicians played motifs from Tannhäuser.

At the same time Ludwig wanted his own blue grotto of Capri. Therefore, 24 dynamo generators powered by a steam engine, had been installed by Johann Sigmund Schuckert in 1878 and so already in the time of Ludwig II it was possible to illuminate the grotto in changing colours. This is said to have been the first Bavarian electricity plant as well as the first permanently installed power plant in the world.The king’s desire for a “bluer blu” spurred the then young paint industry and, four years after Ludwig’s death, the Baden Aniline and Soda Factory (BASF) received a patent from the Imperial Patent Office for the production of artificial indigo dye.