Saturday I went over to Schloss Augustusburg near Koln. It's one of the dozens of palaces that popped up all over Europe after the building of Versailles. As much as the German rulers may have disliked Louis XIV, they had to admit he had style. As soon as Versailles went up, the lovely turreted castles that are featured in so many fairy tales became
passé and terribly old-fashioned. If you want to be one of the "in" rulers (be you duke, prince-bishop, elector, or imperial knight) you had to ditch the gargoyles and princess towers in favor of the rectangular mansion with a fab staircase. Which as it so happens is what Schloss Augustusburg is.
Clemens Augustus was one of those people who through a certain amount of luck and a well-connected family ended up living a life of luxury. He was the fourth son of a Bavarian Elector (the Wittelsbach family we have come to know so well), which meant that he grew up in a cushy sort of life, but his career options were limited to the church. Luckily for him, he wasn't terribly stupid, and after having finished studying in Rome got elected Bishop of Munster and Paderborn. Then he ended up Archbishop of Cologne after his uncle died, which made him one of the Electors of the empire, and Grand master of the Teutonic Order. He also got to personally crown his brother Emperor. All this meant that he got to live an even cushier lifestyle. With several homes and hunting lodges and all the rest of it.
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| Schloss Augustusburg |
Augustusburg was mainly a summer home, although he occasionally visited it out of season. It's quite obvious when you come in that he was a great patron of the arts because there are paintings everywhere. And frescos. So many frescos. All with way too much symbolism involving his brother and the Greek gods on mount olympus. And various women representing a variety of virtues kicking the vices off their cloud. It's always the same old thing in these ceiling frescos. Anyway, he did happen to have one decorative choice that was a bit of a novelty to me: gilded leather walls. Fabricate covered walls are fairly common, but leather was a new choice. And not any old west leather walls either. Silvered leather accented with gold leaf. Definitely a new one. Much of the palace was more or less like many others I've seen, but the grand staircase is special. I managed to sneak this picture:
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| The Grand Staircase |
You can't really tell in this picture, but it's actually really colorful. They used a marble-look-alike stucco and the walls are all really saturated turquoise and pink and red and blue and green. They really stand out against the white sculptural work and black wrought iron balustrade. This castle largely survived the world wars (mostly because Bruhl is just not worth bombing) so even in the 20th century the German President would use this palace for state dinners and such. The German tour members were very impressed to see the spot where the president would stand on the half-landing and greet his guests. I perhaps was less impressed, but I can appreciate a bunch of people in black tie going up a beautiful staircase to a state dinner.
One funny thing in the castle: most of the frescos are meant to be sort of viewed from the center of the room so that you get the full force of the "it looks so real" effect. And generally speaking it does work. If you stand in the center of the room and look straight up, the flat ceilings do come alive and look round and covered in architectural craziness. Except this one room. One of the rooms on the upper floor has this fresco and no matter where you stand it just doesn't work. It's kind of funny in a way because it's such a disaster. It's a nice painting as far as that goes but the visual special effects just don't line up right. It still looks flat. Oops.
The palace also has some nice Baroque French gardens that are sort of nice to wander around, except they're not very big.
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| Swirly Baroque French gardens |
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| Love the colors |
A short (ok fifteen minute) walk away is Falkenlust, Clemens' hunting lodge. And by lodge he means mini-palace. It's small, but beautiful. My problem was that they make you put on these grey felt slippers over your shoes (so you don't hurt the floors), which meant I went slipping and sliding all over the place. I almost fell almost a dozen times. I think the curator breathed a sigh of relief when I left. If they're worried about my flip flops touching the floor, I can't imagine how'd they feel about me falling on it. They also offer you the opportunity to peer through dirty windows to see the rococo/grotto chapel. You're not allowed in there, even with slippers.
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| Falkenlust |
It was a very nice day and I did lots of walking through the "English" sections of the garden. Apparently, a garden is "English" if you leave most of the trees and just have some paths and green lawn space. How the English lay any claim to inventing this is beyond me. The train ride home was mostly pleasant except for the short period where it was so crowded I had to stand and the woman next to me was feeding her baby the most disgusting looking food. That baby had some seriously chubby cheeks too.
The funny part of the train ride was after the train emptied out a bit (allowing everybody to grab a seat), the train conductor came through and forced this Italian family out of first class. The mother was outraged. From what I could gather, she felt that she was entitled to sit wherever on the train she pleased since she had paid for the tickets and there wasn't any room in second class. The conductor took a slightly different (but also outraged) point of view, that if you pay for second class seats, you aren't allowed to sit in first class, regardless of the number of empty seats available in second class. The mother argued back about there aren't any seats, and the conductor dragged her (ok not literally) down the aisle pointing out each and every empty seat in the car. The mother was still outraged in that there was still no way for her and the 7 other members of her family to sit together. Ok I'm sorry but there are so many things wrong with this woman's thinking. First, no matter what, if you don't have a first class ticket, you don't sit in first class. Second, what on earth would make you think that 8 people would be able to sit together on a busy train at 6 pm on a Saturday? Third, you don't argue with a train conductor. Fourth, your children are at least 10. They're not going to be traumatized by not sitting next to you. In fact, they might prefer to not sit next to you. Oh man. It was pretty funny. They ended up going to the next car over in search of more seats but I doubt she found many.
* Note: I know in the American world of transportation it makes zero sense for there to not be enough seats on the train, but they work more like buses here. A lot of people buy a ticket for just that train, but there are also a lot of people who have passes (like my day pass) who can just hop on any train that day provided they stay in the area. So for a lot of local/regional trains you're not really guaranteed a seat; you're just guaranteed they won't kick you off the train. The bigger trains for longer distances have seat reservations, but you could still end up standing part of the way.
