Royal Villa (Regensburg)

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The Royal Villa in Regensburg in the east of the old town was built as a summer residence from 1854 to 1856 by order of the Bavarian King Maximilian II according to plans by the Munich architect Ludwig Foltz . Together with the Royal Villa, a park planned by Ludwig Foltz was created on the grounds of the villa. But also on the outside area of ​​the former east bastion to the east of the villa, where there were gardens already in the time of the sovereign Karl Theodor von Dalberg , a small landscape park was created, today's villa park. After completion of the villa, it received its final design from the royal gardener Carl Effner .

  • Royal villa and villa park

  • View from the north from the opposite bank of the Danube

  • View from the northeast from the same bank of the Danube

  • View from the south with right of way

location

Anatomy tower

The Royal Villa was built in the northeast of the old town, directly on the Danube on the site of the Eastern Bastion, which was last expanded in 1632, an early modern addition to the medieval city ​​fortifications . In the eastern outer area of ​​the narrower villa area - to the east of the preserved city moat in today's Villapark - there was also the Bellevue vantage point, which had been adorned with a classical temple since 1830, with views to the towers of the Regensburg Cathedral in the west and to the Walhalla in the east. In the northwest of the villa area stands the anatomy or powder tower , which is still preserved today , a wall tower of the medieval city wall that is also still preserved there. After the villa was built, the tower was structurally adapted to the neo-Gothic style of the Royal Villa.

The eastern boundary of the narrow castle grounds was given by the preserved moat, the northern section of which on the Danube was to be expanded into a gondola port. This project was abandoned after the completion of the villa construction, after 1865, because the entire bank zone of the Danube was required for the planned track systems of the port railway . To the east of the city moat, on the site of the former eastern bastion, the gardens were created from which today's Villa Park emerged.

During a visit, Maximilian took a liking to this place, which was also suitable for the extensive construction of a castle because of the still little developed area at the time.

program

The formerly important Free Imperial City of Regensburg, the original capital of the early medieval duchy of Bavaria , was annexed to the new Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810 and then threatened to be forgotten by the provinces. That is why it was a concern of the city to come back into the light of political events. One possibility to achieve this goal was to be able to offer the Bavarian royal family a representative palace building in Regensburg for the hoped-for stays in the city. The purchase of the required land on Adolf-Schmetzer-Strasse and the financing of the planned palace building project were made possible for the city by the fact that the royal family sold some unneeded land in Regensburg and Barbing , which had come into royal property in the course of secularization. The funds obtained were made available to the city of Regensburg for financing. With the construction of the palace, Maximilian II also pursued the goal of contributing to the development of a Bavarian national feeling. He promoted an architectural style inspired by the English neo-Gothic , which was to develop into a Bavarian national style. This style, which is ideally realized in Maximilianstrasse in Munich, was later also called the Maximilian style after its spiritual father .

Coat of arms on the north facade

building

The three-story main building was built on an L-shaped floor plan. The front side with the most important representation rooms faces the Danube in an east-west orientation with a large window front. On both sides of the windows there are two coats of arms, which stand for the ruling houses Wittelsbach and Hohenzollern , from which the royal couple came. Both wings of the building are symmetrical in themselves. The facades are each flanked by octagonal turrets. Two loggias were added symmetrically to the north-south wing, which were supposed to lead to ancillary buildings, of which only one was realized, which is laid out parallel to the city moat to the east. The dining and ballrooms are on the ground floor and the apartments of the king, queen and crown prince are on the upper floors.

use

The royal family used the villa sparingly and infrequently. After visiting the construction site in 1856, shortly before the building was completed, King Maximilian spent only a few summer days there in 1858 and 1860. Representative splendor fell on the Royal Villa only for a few weeks in 1866, when the Saxon royal family resided there during the Prussian-Austrian War : The family of King John of Saxony and their entourage were able to use the villa with 85 steam trains from the Kingdom of Saxony on one day Reach the Danube bank directly below the villa.

After the abolition of the monarchy , the villa became the property of the State of Bavaria. It stood empty from 1918 to 1920 and was used as a tenement house from 1920 to 1979. 1979–2007 she was the department of the Regensburg Agriculture Authority. 1979–1981 a thorough renovation was carried out, whereby special emphasis was placed on the preservation of the original building stock of floors, doors and windows. After another renovation, the Royal Villa has been used by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation since 2007 . The division of the building was not significantly affected by the multiple changes in use and is therefore largely in its original state.

Equipment details

Almost all of the movable equipment was transported to Munich in 1918 and was almost completely lost there in World War II. A few pieces of furniture were later found in the episcopal palace in Regensburg and brought back after the renovation. The main staircase of the villa is designed as a richly decorated spiral staircase. Another, somewhat simpler, spiral staircase leads from the queen's bedroom to that of the king. A ceiling painting with a portrait of a child has been preserved in the queen's bedroom. Several head sculptures - in the lintel of the door to the terrace and in the fountain in front of the south wing - show children. It is speculated that these could be images of the two princes, the later kings Ludwig II and Otto I. In the carriage passage, two column sculptures show allegorical figures of the rivers Regen and Danube . Allusions to the ruling houses represented by the royal couple can also be found in the interior. In the queen's salon, beam supports and door knobs are designed in the shape of the Prussian eagle, and in the king's salon as Bavarian lions. The decoration of the building increases with the height of the floors, both inside and outside. The doors and windows are most elaborately designed on the third floor, which housed the king's rooms.

Villa park

Entrance to the villa park

Today's one and a half hectare villa park was originally laid out as a palace garden on the grounds of the former eastern bastion by Munich court gardener Carl Effner with the assistance of architect Ludwig Foltz. Both set great store by planting and a rich tree population and had trees, shrubs and plants delivered from the court gardeners in Nymphenburg and Schleissheim and the surrounding forests. An avenue of linden trees was laid out from Ostengasse to the main entrance. After the three-year restoration of the entire park, which was completed in 2015, including the preserved walls of the former city fortifications, today's planting is again based on the old ideas and plans of the court gardener Effner.

literature

  • Anke Borgmeyer, Achim Hubel, Andreas Tillmann, Angelika Wellnhofer: City of Regensburg, monuments in Bavaria . Volume III.37, Regensburg 1997, pp. 14-16.
  • Rosa Micus: The royal villa in Regensburg. Office of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation. Dr. Peter Morsbach Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-937527-40-6 .

Web links

Commons : Royal Mansion  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monument profile Villapark, City of Regensburg, Office for Archives and Monument Preservation, status 2009
  2. ^ Karl Bauer: Regensburg Art, Culture and Everyday History . 6th edition. MZ-Buchverlag in H. Gietl Verlag & Publication Service GmbH, Regenstauf 2014, ISBN 978-3-86646-300-4 , p. 378-381 .
  3. ↑ Veronika Schmeer: The royal villa in Regensburg, For the reception of the castle style in southern Germany . In: City of Regensburg, Office for Archives and Preservation of Monuments (ed.): Preservation of monuments in Regensburg . tape 12 . Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2371-6 , pp. 101 .
  4. ^ Monument profile Adolf Schmetzer-Straße 1, Royal Villa, City of Regensburg, Office for Archives and Monument Preservation, status 2009

Coordinates: 49 ° 1 ′ 9 ″  N , 12 ° 6 ′ 30 ″  E