Beautiful Streets: bridging the Isar in Munich

After the first Bavarian king Maximilian (Max) I had started a classicist inspired project to improve his capital city of Munich by adding the eponymous Maxvorstadt between 1805 and 1810, his son Louis I (Ludwig in German) completed his vision by building the so-called Splendid Streets, avenues lined with trees and large buildings aligned on monuments placed at important junctions within the urban landscape.

His son Maximilian II ruled as king of Bavaria from 1848 until his death in 1864. He tried his best to maintain the independence of Bavaria within the German Confederation and paid patronage to the arts and science. He was however completely dependent upon the Austrian Empire the strongest and most populous country within the German Confederation. Max II resided in the Munich Residence, which had been enlarged and unified with new classicist facades by his father Ludwig, and the pleasure palace of Nymphenburg a few miles west of the city. The new king had to make his mark on the city after his very visibly influential father and grandfather before him.

So, shortly after his ascension to the throne Max II commissions the sheep paddocks east of the river Isar to be converted into a "memorable urban jewel crowning the glorious capital city of Munich". His grand scheme however proves difficult to realise as the low-lying grasslands are susceptible to seasonal flooding, the higher banks are stony and infertile and land has to be acquired within the old city to be able to link both banks of the Isar. The work finally starts in 1856 to build the terraces designed by Carl von Effner, the Senior Court Gardener between Haidhausen and Bogenhausen later known as the Maximiliansanlage or Max Gardens. Before this work had started in 1850 with the laying out of the Maximilianstrasse, a royal avenue, intended to beautify the city. This Beautiful Street starts at a large public square next to the Residence in front of the State Theatre and runs in a straight line to a bridge across the Isar to culminate in a roundel with at its centre the Maximilianeum (1857-74) originally a school for the gifted, now the State Parliament of Bavaria.Many of the buildings along this axis were designed or supervised by Friedrich Bürklein who worked in an eclectic style mixing elements from gothic and classicist architecture. The Gasteig Gardens directly south of the Maximilianeum were an integral part of the whole design.

The central axis of the Maximiliansanlage is formed by the Maximiliansstrasse linking the Maximilianeum (8) and the Max-Josef-Platz (1)  in front of the Bayerisch National Theater (2) across the Isar via the Maximiliansbrücke (7). At the start of the Beautiful Street Stadtpaläste (3) where built as an urban residence for landed gentry. The section that cut through the hitherto semirural area of Lehel was laid out with a central public garden with the Maxmonument (6) that started formally at the Maximiliansbauten (4) and ended at the Maximilianeum. Along the street the Völkerkundemuseum (5) was built. The waterlevel in the Isar is regulated by the Pumping House or Maxwerk (9) that sits on the Auer Mühlbach.

These Gasteig Gardens have since been merged into the Maximilian Gardens the 30 hectare park on the eastern bank of the Isar directly adjacent to the old city. At the heart of this landscape park stands the Prince Regent Terrace with a grotto and dolphin fountain that was commissioned by and named after Luitpold of Bavaria who was Regent for his nephews the incapable Louis II and Otto, both sons of Max II. Luitpold had revived a plan from 1852 for a northern Beautiful Street parallel to the Maximilianstrasse. First building work started on the focal point across the Isar (constructed between 1888 and 1894). In 1891 a new street was laid out between this viewing platform with fountain and the Prinz Carl Palais. In remembrance of the 25 years of peace after the Franco-German war of 1870/71 a monument was commissioned to be built atop the Prince Regent's Terrace in the shape of a small temple  underneath a column topped by an edifice of the Angel of Peace (Friedensengel). In 1996 the first stone was laid with the festive reveal on July 16 1899. This monument dwarfed the original viewing terraces and is still the point de vue of the Prinzregentenstrasse. In contrast to the axial interventions of his predecessors Luitpold's Beautiful Street, eponymously named Prinzregentstrasse, was not to be linked with official buildings, institutions and the like, but was designed as the focus of a fashionable residential area for the elite, much like Hausmann's axial interventions in Paris (carried out between 1853 an 1870).

The second Beautiful Street completed the axial intervention bridging the Isar and thus completing the intended Maximiliansanlage (B). The northern Beautiful Street runs close to the Englisher Garten (A) and the Hirschanger (A*), with the Prinz Carl Palais (1) functioning as a spatial anchor point between this public park, the new street and the Hofgarten (C) of the Munich Residence. The new axis  of the Prinzregentstrasse runs across the Prinzregentenbrücke (2) towards the Prinzregententerasse (3) with the Friedensengel (4). Contrary to its original plan the street is imbedded in many imitations: Bayerisch Nationalmuseum (5), Statsministerium (6), Haus der Kunst (7), Statskanzlei (8) and Innenministerium Bayern (9). The Deutches Museum (D)  was added in 1925 as a separate non-axial intervention on an island in the Isar.

Besides these royal axial interventions, the new additions to Munich were commissioned and built by private developers. These suburbs all have a Paris-inspired layout with a contorted grid of streets bisected by streets radiating from a square or public garden as the focus of the new quarter. Plots in these suburbs were sold to individuals for building large urban villa's on them or to investors who would have fancy mansion blocks and terraces built. These suburbs are known as: Isarvorstadt (E), Auvorstadt (F) and Ludwigvorstadt (G).