"Palace decorations" Top 5 Page for this destination Bruchsal Things to Do Tip by Nemorino

Bruchsal Things to Do: 50 reviews and 116 photos

1. Restored pillars, walls and paintings

by Nemorino

1. Restored pillars, walls and paintings
by Nemorino
2. Staircase with restored and re-painted pillars
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3. In the elaborately restored palace
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4. Statue of a man holding up the roof
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Starting in 1964 the palace decorations were carefully and elaborately restored, using traditional materials and techniques whenever possible.

As in the Semper Opera House in Dresden, the apparently marble pillars are not made of marble at all but of plaster that has been carefully painted to look like marble. Only very skilled artisans can do this, often using techniques that have been passed down from father to son for many generations.

Second photo: The palace staircase with restored and re-painted pillars.

Third photo: In the elaborately restored palace.

Fourth photo: Statue of a man as a pillar holding up the roof. (Isn't there some special name for this sort of statue??)

Update: Thanks to VT member german_eagle (Ingo) for his comment about the fourth photo: "Btw, that figure holding up the roof is remarkable. Usually they are female figures, called Karyatide. But a man?"

That comment provided me with a word to start searching for. After looking up the word Karyatide in a few places I found that it is usually spelled caryatid in English, and that a male figure which is used in place of a column to hold up a building is called an Atlas or Atlant (stress on the second syllable), after the mythological figure Atlas, who was forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders for ever and ever. In ancient Roman architecture this sort of male figure was called a telamon.