Sunday 15 August – The Residenz

Well with the weather being dodgy, but nowhere near as bad as forecast, I decided to visit the Residenz, which I had visited in previous trips to Munich, but its always under some degree of restoration, so worth going again. Now for those not familiar with it the Residenz is a sprawling city palace, much added to and therefore a bit of a nightmare to get around, if you are anal like me and don’t want to feel you have missed anything. First, I must say praise for the audioguide. The joy of being able to get a little bit of commentary on just the things you are interested in rather than the “personal touch” of a real guide nattering in bad English about just the most famous bits interspersed with awful jokes that the crowd feel obliged to laugh at, is immeasurable. Also nice was the way the audioguide tells you at the start that if you listen to ALL the commentary it will take approximately 5 hours. So you know you have to do some rationing.


The first part of the trip, the Treasury, suits my love of pretty baubles. Gold, gemstones, ivory, all with tremendous standards of workmanship. And we must be thankful that the Church spent so little of its accumulated wealth on the poor (who, of course will not always be with us, but will have died in droves due to disease and malnourishment) but lavished so much on precious artworks. And the same of course may be said of all those devout rulers who for some reason were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of an easy place in heaven and make do with a lifestyle of ultimate luxury on Earth. Ah, thank heaven for their rank hypocrisy or we would all be culturally so much the poorer now.

And then one finishes with the CuvillIes Theatre which I am sure would be a lovely place for a concert, although I can’t quite see the Prodigy playing there any time soon. Love the sheer opulence.

And for the evening, a trip to the combined Irish bar and Australian pub (covering all good time bases there except for the Bavarian beer hall) to watch the Liverpool v Arsenal game. Bless globalisation. You are never very far from a Premier League game.