The overlooked corners inside

• Museum of Man and Nature

  In the north wing of Nymphenburg Palace sits a natural history museum with a character all its own, worlds away from the Baroque palace around it. Across 2,500 square metres, the galleries trace a long arc — the birth of the solar system, the history of the Earth, the evolution of life — through to human anatomy, nutrition, environmental questions, and the relationship between people and the natural world. One specimen comes with a story: the brown bear JJ1, on display since April 2008, who in life echoed his ancestor — the last brown bear in Bavaria, shot 170 years earlier. The museum also sets aside a hands-on "playful nature lesson" area for children, so that natural history is more than specimens behind glass.

  Sources: de.wikipedia.org

• Marstallmuseum (Carriage Museum)

  In the row of former court stables in the south wing of Nymphenburg Palace now stands one of the most important collections of court carriages in Europe. Drawn from the Bavarian and Palatine electors and the royal house of Wittelsbach, the fleet lines up from the late 17th century to the late 19th, tracing the full evolution of the carriage; the exhibits come from Germany, France, and England. Lavish harnesses, costly riding gear, and historical images bring back the vanished world of courtly travel and display — not a cold gallery of objects, but a living history of ceremony.

  Sources: de.wikipedia.org

• Munich Porcelain Museum

  Above the Marstallmuseum lies a porcelain museum known as the Bäuml Collection, counted among the most important collections of Nymphenburg porcelain in the world. Since 1986 it has displayed more than a thousand pieces from the Nymphenburg porcelain manufactory, founded in 1747, ranging from the factory's earliest days through to around the First World War. The world inside the cases is strikingly varied: perfume bottles; snuffboxes painted with erotic scenes or Masonic symbols; candlesticks; holy-water fonts; tureens; busts; cups bearing royal portraits or Bavarian landscapes; and porcelain figurines and large, ornate vases — the fine grain of court taste laid out piece by piece.

  Sources: de.wikipedia.org

• Johannesbrunnhaus

  Tucked into the north wing of the palace complex, this plain little building houses what is believed to be the oldest continuously operating pump machinery in Europe. In 1807–08, engineer Joseph von Baader installed a cast-iron hydraulic pump here to feed the great fountain in front of the palace — and it has run without interruption ever since. The fountain jets roughly 55 litres of water per second to a height of eight to ten metres. When Napoleon visited in 1805 he was reportedly so impressed he asked Baader to design an equivalent system for Versailles; that project never happened. Baader had spent 1786–1794 studying mechanical engineering in England during the Industrial Revolution, and on his return was commissioned by Elector Maximilian IV to replace the old wooden pump. The cast-iron replacement was quieter and, fitted with an air-pressure vessel, maintained steady water pressure — making the old Baroque water tower redundant overnight.

  Sources: schloss-nymphenburg.de · schloesser.bayern.de · de.wikipedia.org

• Court Chapel

  In the second pavilion of the outer north wing sits Nymphenburg's court chapel, and its story is one of stops and starts. Elector Max Emanuel ordered its construction in 1702; architect Enrico Zuccalli drew up the design and Antonio Viscani supervised the build — then the War of the Spanish Succession brought political upheaval and the work halted. Building resumed only in 1715, under Joseph Effner. The chapel is dedicated to the Holy Trinity and St. Clement, and its altar incorporates an earlier sculptural group depicting Christ and Mary Magdalene. In 1759 the painter Joseph Mölck filled the vault with vivid frescoes tracing the life of Mary Magdalene, giving this politically interrupted chapel a complete pictorial story from ceiling to altar.

  Sources: schloss-nymphenburg.de · en.wikipedia.org · de.wikipedia.org

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