Architecture

When considering a building's design, particularly for structures built before the 20th century, keep in mind that very few buildings were actually built in one style. A large, expensive structure -- such as a church, usually the most significant building in any town -- often took centuries to complete, during which time tastes would change and plans would be altered. While each architectural era has its own distinctive features, some elements, general floor plans, and terms are common to many, or may appear near the end of one era and continue through several later ones.

From the Romanesque period on, most churches consist either of a single wide aisle, or a wide central nave flanked by two narrow aisles. The aisles are separated from the nave by a row of columns, or square stacks of masonry called piers, usually connected by arches.

This main nave/aisle assemblage is usually crossed by a perpendicular corridor called a transept near the far, east end of the church so that the floor plan looks like a Latin cross (shaped like a crucifix). The shorter, east arm of the nave is the holiest area, called the chancel; it often houses the stalls of the choir and the altar. If the far end of the chancel is rounded off, we call it an apse. An ambulatory is a curving corridor outside the altar and choir area, separating it from the ring of smaller chapels radiating off the chancel.

Some churches, especially after the Renaissance when mathematical proportion became important, were built on a Greek cross plan, each axis the same length like a giant +. By the baroque, funky shapes became popular, with churches built in the round or as ellipses, for example.

Romanesque (10th-12th C.)

Romanesque architects concentrated on building large churches with wide aisles to accommodate the masses. The Romanesque took its inspiration from ancient Rome (hence the name) where early Christians had adapted the basilica (ancient Roman law court buildings) to become churches.

Identifiable Features -- Rounded arches. These load-bearing architectural devices allowed architects to open up wide naves and spaces, channeling all the weight of the stone walls and ceiling across the curve of the arch and down into the ground via the columns or pilasters (a shallow pier or rectangular column projecting only slightly from a wall).

Thick walls, infrequent and small windows, and huge piers. These were necessary to support the weight of all that masonry, giving Romanesque churches a dark, somber, mysterious, and often oppressive feeling.

Tall towers on the facades. Many Romanesque churches look a bit like fortresses with their squat, solid facade towers.

Dual chancels. Several Romanesque churches have chancels at both the west and the east ends. The one on the west end is usually more ornate, having been built for the emperor and his court (a holdover from pre-Romanesque churches which often had a Westwerk, a tower on the west end where the imperial retinue could attend Mass without mixing with the masses).

Blind arcades. A range of decorative arches carried on piers or columns and attached to a wall.

Dwarf gallery. On the exterior (curving around the apse, decorating the facade, or running all along the walls -- always up high), this is a line of small, open arches, like a tiny loggia (a room open on one or more sides).

Best Examples -- Mainz's Dom. Looking more like a castle fortress than a church, with two massive towers and four smaller ones, it sports chancels at both ends.

Worms's Dom St. Peter. Another fortress of God with a dual-chancel arrangement, it has two imposing facades sprouting rounded towers and dwarf galleries. Though the entrance is Gothic, the St. Anna chapel has Romanesque statues.

Speyer's Kaiserdom. The largest cathedral in Germany, this four-towered Romanesque basilica houses the largest and best Romanesque crypt in Germany. Dwarf galleries and blind arcades ring the entire exterior. The nave's vaulting, however, was a first step toward the Gothic.

Gothic (13th-16th C.)

By the 12th century, engineering developments freed architects from constructing the heavy, thick walls of Romanesque structures. As a result, ceilings began to soar, walls began to thin, and windows began to proliferate.

Instead of dark, somber, relatively unadorned Romanesque interiors that forced the eyes of the faithful toward the altar, where the priest stood droning on in unintelligible Latin, the Gothic interior enticed the churchgoers' gaze upward to high ceilings filled with light. The priests still conducted Mass in Latin, but now peasants could "read" the Gothic comic books of stained-glass windows.

From the exterior, the squat and brooding Romanesque fortresses of God were replaced by graceful buttresses and soaring spires, which rose from town centers like beacons of religion.

German Hallenkirche, or "Hall Churches," spread from Westphalia throughout southern Germany. Their aisles and transept are about the same height as the nave, the whole ensemble almost as wide as it is tall, giving Hallenkirche an airy, boxy look.

Identifiable Features -- Pointed arches. The most significant development of the Gothic era was the discovery that pointed arches could carry far more weight than rounded ones.

Cross vaults. Instead of being flat, the square patch of ceiling between four columns arches up to a point in the center, creating four sail shapes, sort of like the underside of a pyramid. The X separating these four sails is often reinforced with ridges called ribbing. As the Gothic progressed, four-sided cross vaults became six-, eight-, or multisided as architects played with the angles.

Flying buttresses. These free-standing exterior pillars connected by graceful, thin arms of stone help channel the weight of the building and its roof out and down into the ground. To help counter the cross-forces involved in this engineering sleight of hand, the piers of buttresses are often topped by heavy pinnacles or statues.

Spires. These pinnacles of masonry seem to defy gravity and reach toward heaven itself.

Gargoyles. These wide-mouthed creatures are actually drain spouts.

Tracery. These delicate, lacy spider webs of carved stone curlicues grace the pointy ends of windows and acute lower intersections of cross vaulting.

Stained glass. Because pointed arches can carry more weight than rounded ones, windows could be larger and more numerous. They are often filled with Bible stories and symbolism writ in the colorful patterns of stained glass. Large, circular ones on facades and transepts ends are called rose windows.

Choir screen. Serving as the inner wall of the ambulatory and outer wall of the choir section, the choir screen is often decorated with carvings or tombs.

Half-timbered houses. The Gothic era saw the rebuilding of German towns with houses made of exposed cross timbers with the triangular sections between them filled in with plaster, often painted.

Best Examples -- Cologne Cathedral. This is a hulk of a Gothic cathedral, and Germany's finest, at once massive and graceful. The facade is Germany's keynote example of flamboyant Gothic, the interior a soaring void of arches and light, impossibly huge. It also contains some fantastic Gothic stained glass, paintings, and carved choir stalls.

Freiburg Cathedral. Built almost entirely during the Middle Ages, this cathedral is a remarkable Gothic construct, centered on an enormous single tower that comprises the facade (with its great gargoyles), and an extended chancel surrounded by a late-Gothic ambulatory and radiating chapels.

Ulm Münster. Second in size only to Cologne's cathedral, Ulm's Münster sports the world's tallest spire -- though it did take 500 years to complete, so the 1890 finishing is neo-Gothic. Inside, rather than a nave, there are five airy aisles with no transept.

Hallenkirche. The best of Germany's tall, airy Hall Churches are Nördlingen's St. Georgskirche, Munich's Frauenkirche, Dinkelsbühl's Georgenkirche, and Nürnberg's St.-Lorenz-Kirche.

Backsteingotik (Northern Brick Gothic). East of the Elbe and along the Baltic, the prevailing use of brick forced Gothic architecture to be simple and monumental. Lübeck's soaring Marienkirche and towering Rathaus (town hall) both served as models for other brick churches and secular architecture, including Schwerin's Dom, and Stralsund's St. Nikolaikirche and Rathaus.

Gothic towns. The best-preserved town centers with Gothic-style houses and buildings include Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Goslar, Regensburg, and Tübingen.

Renaissance (Late 15th Through Mid-17th C.)

Germany was so busy with the Reformation that the country had little time for the Renaissance, which really only had an effect in southern Germany (transalpine influences from Italy) and a few isolated examples in the far north (influences from Flemish and Dutch neighbors).

Identifiable Features -- Italianate Renaissance. Other than a close eye to the Renaissance ideals of proportion, symmetry, and the Classical orders (distinguished by the use of three column capitals: Corinthian, Ionic, and Doric), little specifically identifies Italianate Renaissance buildings.

Weser Renaissance. This late-16th- and early-17th-century style was prevalent in Lower Saxony, distinguishable on houses by pinnacled gables (the triangular upper portion of a wall at the end of a pitched roof), heavy scrollwork, elaborate dormers (an upright window projecting from a sloping roof), rounded pediments (a low-pitched feature above a window, door, or pavilion), and decorative stone bands.

Best Examples -- Michaelskirche, Munich. The only solidly Renaissance church in Germany, built (1583-97) by the Jesuits to resemble their church in Rome, Michaelskirche has a harmonious statue-studded facade and a huge, cradle-vaulted single nave.

Hameln. The Pied Piper town has several fine Weser Renaissance houses, including the Rattenfängerhaus, Hochzeitshaus, and Dempterscheshaus.

Celle. The preserved town center is Weser Renaissance, entirely built between the 16th and 18th centuries, including the moated Herzogschloss Castle.

Baroque & Rococo (17th-18th C.)

More than any other movement, the baroque aimed toward a seamless meshing of architecture and art. The stuccoes, sculptures, and paintings of this time were all carefully designed to complement each other -- and the space itself -- to create a unified whole. This effect was both aesthetic and narrative, the various art forms all working together to tell a single biblical story (or, often, to subtly relate the deeds of the commissioning patron to great historic or biblical events).

The German baroque only truly flourished in the south and in lower Saxony -- especially in Catholic, Counter-Reformation areas -- but these regions excelled at it, managing to make Germany's brand of over-the-top, baroque chaos work better perhaps than in any other country. Whereas rococo is usually used as a derogatory term for the baroque gone awry into the grotesque, in Germany the rococo actually succeeds (sometimes).

Identifiable Features -- Classical architecture rewritten with curves. Baroque lines follow a complex geometry and interplay of concave and convex surfaces. The overall effect is to lighten the appearance of structures and add movement of line and vibrancy to the static look of the Renaissance.

Complex decoration. Unlike the sometimes severe and austere designs of the Renaissance, the baroque was playful. Architects festooned structures and encrusted interiors with an excess of decorations -- lots of ornate stucco work, pouty cherubs, airy frescoes, heavy gilding, twisting columns, multicolored marbles, and general frippery -- all intended to liven things up.

Multiplying forms. The baroque loved to pile up its forms and elements to create a rich, busy effect, breaking a pediment curve into segments so each would protrude further out than the last, or building up an architectural feature by stacking short sections of concave walls, each one curving to a different arc.

Best Examples -- The Residenz, Würzburg (1720-44). Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753) designed this sumptuous baroque palace, including the monumental staircase under the world's largest ceiling fresco by Italian master Tiepolo. The palace's chapel is textbook rococo.

Wieskirche, near Füssen (1746-54). Dominikus Zimmermann (1685-1766) crafted this oval-planned rococo beauty in the middle of a cow pasture; he had it frescoed by his brother Johann Baptist.

Sans Souci Palace, Potsdam (1744-1860). Frederick the Great's palace is one of Europe's best examples of rococo set amid one of the most intricately landscaped gardens in Prussia.

Cuvillié's Munich buildings. Jean François de Cuvilliés (1698-1767), a French dwarf, was originally the Elector of Bavaria's court jester until his talent for architecture was recognized. After schooling in France, he returned to Munich to craft its greatest rococo monuments, including the jewel box of the Residenz's Alte Residenztheater, which now bears his name, and the facade of the baroque Theatinerkirche. His masterpiece is Schloss Nymphenburg's Amalienburg hunting lodge, which became a model for palaces across Europe.

Neoclassicism & Romantic (Mid-18th Through 19th C.)

As a backlash against the excesses of the baroque and rococo, by the middle of the 18th century, architects began turning to the austere simplicity and grandeur of the Classical Age and inaugurated the neoclassical style. Their work was inspired by the rediscovery of Pompeii and other ancient sites. However, many of their interiors continued to be rococo, though more muted than before.

The sterility of German neoclassicism didn't last long, however, and the 19th century left the increasing nationalist German society looking into its own past for inspiration, kicking off the neo-Gothic romantic movement.

Identifiable Features -- Neoclassical. The classical ideals of mathematical proportion and symmetry, first rediscovered during the Renaissance, are neoclassical hallmarks. Of the classical orders, German neoclassicists preferred the austere, monumental Doric style for their templelike buildings and massive colonnaded porticos.

Romantic. Gothic fantasy is the only way to describe this style, which cranked up the defining aspects of the Gothic (spires, tracery, buttresses, and gargoyles) to higher and more dramatic levels than the Middle Ages ever imagined.

Best Examples -- In Berlin. The Prussians remade Berlin in a neoclassical image, starting with the Brandenburger Tor and moving on to the buildings of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), among which Altes Museum, Schloss Charlottenhof, and Nikolaikirche are his best. There's a museum devoted to him called the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche-Schinkelmuseum.

In Munich. Ludwig I had Leo von Kelnze lay out neoclassical structures across his "new Athens," including those surrounding Königsplatz and the nearby Alte and Neue Pinakotheks.

Ludwig II's Bavarian fantasies. Caught up in Wagner's dramatic operas set in the heroic Middle Ages, "Mad King" Ludwig II was the ultimate romantic, building for himself a series of faux medieval fairy-tale castles, including Herrenchiemsee's Neues Schloss and the incomparable fantasy of Neuschwanstein Castle, a festival of banner-fluttering towers and battlements right out of a Brothers Grimm folk tale, its entire setting chosen solely for its picture-postcard perfection.

Germany's take on the early-20th-century Art Nouveau movement was called Jugendstil.

The Bauhaus was a 1920s avant-garde school of architecture led by Walter Gropius (1883-1969) that combined industrial-age architecture with art and craft to create functional buildings and furnishings. Among its chief designers and institute teachers were Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, and Paul Klee. The Nazis closed the school down in 1933, though it was reborn in Chicago.

Identifiable Features -- Jugendstil. This style reacted against the burgeoning culture of mass production by stressing the uniqueness of craft. Practitioners created asymmetrical, curvaceous designs based on organic inspiration (plants and flowers) and used such materials as wrought iron, stained glass, tile, and hand-painted wallpaper.

Bauhaus. A use of right angles, concrete, and glass, and an absence of ornamentation, characterize many Bauhaus structures, which otherwise share only a devotion to functionality. In design, the movement is famous for its early plastic and metal tube chairs.

Best Examples -- Jugendstil. Jugendstil houses and hotels exist across Germany, but the movement took its name from Jugend magazine published in the Schwabing district of Munich, where many buildings in the style survive. Munich is also home to the Jugendstil Museum in the Stuck-Villa, a hybrid neoclassical/Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) structure.

Bauhaus. Bauhaus structures, too, pepper Germany in unobtrusive ways, often in city outskirts. One fine example includes Berlin's Die Siemensstadt, the first modern housing complex, built with long "slab" blocks, by Walter Gropius (the founder of the Bauhaus movement). Berlin also has the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, devoted to Bauhaus drawings, photographs, and some design examples.