Ansbach residence

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Ansbach residence
Main facade of the residence

Main facade of the residence

Data
place Ansbach , Promenade 27
Coordinates 49 ° 18 '11 "  N , 10 ° 34' 33"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 18 '11 "  N , 10 ° 34' 33"  E
Arcaded courtyard by de Gabrieli and Retti
Sentry box in front of the magnificent facade

The Ansbach residence was the seat of government of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach . Today the residence is a museum palace of the Bavarian Palace Administration and also houses the government of Middle Franconia .

residence

The residence developed from a medieval complex.

Between 1398 and 1400, the future Elector Friedrich I of Brandenburg built a monastery outside the city wall into a moated castle. The remains are preserved in the northwest wing of today's residence.

Under Margrave Georg Friedrich I , the Swabian architect Blasius Berwart (1563–1589 supreme margravial architect) built a sophisticated Renaissance residence from 1565 to 1575.

A good century later the last major construction phase of the residence began, 1694–1716 under Gabriel de Gabrieli , 1719–1730 under Carl Friedrich von Zocha and 1731–1749 under Leopoldo Retti .

Around 1565/1575 a long room was created, today called the large Gothic Hall with its ribbed vault . This clearly shows that the residence is not a completely new Baroque and Rococo building. The largest collection of faience and porcelain from the former Ansbach factory is on display here.

Between 1705 and 1738 it was converted to its present form. The builder Gabriel de Gabrieli from Graubünden created the south-east wing as the main front of the palace and the arcade courtyard in a form approximating the Viennese baroque until 1709. The interior is from the time between 1734 and 1745 under the architect Leopoldo Retti.

The other renovations under Margrave Alexander also remained in the rococo conventions , although carvers such as the court carpenter Johann Christoph Berg were thoroughly familiar with the styles of early classicism , so that the piano nobile is now almost exclusively in the rococo style.

The fact that precisely this time has been preserved is due to the fact that the last Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach handed over the residence to the Kingdom of Prussia when he abdicated in 1791 . Since the castle was no longer the seat of the ruler, the rooms no longer had to be modernized to suit the taste of their residents.

The ceiling fresco by Carlo Carlone in the ballroom, the rococo picture gallery with works from the former margravial gallery, the tiled hall lined with 2800 ceramic tiles and the mirror cabinet decorated with Meissen porcelain are all worth seeing .

  • Ballroom

  • Audience room of the margravine

  • Tiled hall

  • gallery

  • Gothic hall with ribbed vault

Orangery and courtyard garden

A garden located there was first mentioned at the beginning of the 16th century in Leonhart Fuchs' book of herbs . Between 1723 and 1750 it was designed as a baroque garden. Badly damaged in the Second World War, it was recreated after the end of the war in the style of the 17th and 18th centuries. A herb garden with many medicinal plants and a citrus house for wintering the potted plants are worth seeing.

Since the court garden is not axially assigned to the residence, the then senior building director Carl Friedrich von Zocha created an independent architectural center for the garden with the castle-like orangery . Construction began in 1726 according to Zocha's plans and the shell was finished in 1730. During the visit of Frederick the Great in September 1743, however, it still seems to have been unfinished. (Zocha also expanded the palace in Unterschwaningen , built in 1613, for the margrave couple Wilhelm Friedrich and Christiane Charlotte from 1713 to 1719. )

In 1825 a memorial was erected for the Ansbach poet Johann Peter Uz (1720–1796) with a bronze bust created by Carl Alexander Heideloff . The inscription on the stele-like base reads:

THE WISE, THE POET, THE MAN FRIEND, HIS ADORERS

Not far from there, a small Gothic pillar commemorates Kaspar Hauser , who died on December 14, 1833 in the Hofgarten.

The annual Rococo Festival takes place in the orangery and the courtyard garden and shows life at court during the time of Margrave Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (Brandenburg-Ansbach) .

Orangery in the Ansbach court garden

See also

literature

  • Rembrant Fiedler: On the work of the builder Gabriel de Gabrieli in Vienna and Ansbach. Bamberg 1993 (Diss. Univ. Würzburg).
  • Christoph Graf von Pfeil: The furniture of the Ansbach residence. (Administration of State Palaces, Gardens and Lakes, Catalogs of Art Collections); Prestel, Munich / London / New York 1999, ISBN 3-7913-2078-5 .
  • Ders .: Residenz Ansbach with courtyard garden and orangery. Official leader. Recast; Bavarian Administration of State Palaces, Gardens and Lakes. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-932982-58-4 .
  • Josef Maier: Residenzschloß Ansbach. Shape and equipment in the course of time (= yearbook of the Historical Association for Middle Franconia 100); Ansbach 2005, ISBN 3-87707-660-2 .
  • Wolfgang Wüst: Life between courtly luxury and economic tightness. The residences of the bishops of Augsburg and the Franconian Hohenzollern in absolutism. In: Journal of the Historical Association for Swabia. 99,2006, ISBN 3-89639-558-0 , pp. 111-134.

Web links

Commons : Residenz Ansbach  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files