Early rococo church inside the Benedictine monastery, Ettal Abbey
The Amber Room in the Catherine Palace is a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Construction began in 1701 to 1709 in Prussia at Charlottenburg Palace where it remained until 1716 when it was given to Tsar Peter the Great of the Russian Empire. In Russia it was expanded and after several renovations, it covered more than 55 square meters and contained over 6 tons of amber.
The Amber Room was looted during World War II by Nazi Germany and brought to Königsberg. Knowledge of its whereabouts was lost in the chaos at the end of the war. It was never seen again, though reports have occasionally surfaced stating that components of the Amber Room survived the war.
There have been numerous conflicting reports and theories, among them that the Amber Room was destroyed by bombing, hidden in a now-lost subterranean bunker in Königsberg, buried in mines in the Ore Mountains, or taken onto a ship or submarine which was sunk by Soviet forces in the Baltic Sea. In 1997 one Italian stone mosaic that was part of a set of four which had decorated the Amber Room did turn up in western Germany, in the possession of the family of a soldier who had helped pack up the Amber Room. At one point in 1998, two separate teams announced that they had located the Amber Room, the first in a silver mine, the second buried in a lagoon; neither produced the Amber Room. On 20 February 2008, German treasure hunters claimed to have found the Amber room.
In 1979 efforts began to rebuild the Amber room at Tsarskoye Selo. In 2003, after decades of work by Russian craftsmen, the reconstructed Amber Room was inaugurated in the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Freising Cathedral
Great Gallery, Schönbrunn Palace
Golden Gallery, Charlottenburg Palace
The Library, Admont Abbey.
“Built in 1776 to designs by the architect Joseph Hüber, it is 70 metres long, 14 metres wide and 13 metres high, and is the largest monastery library in the world. It contains c. 70,000 volumes of the monastery’s entire holdings of c. 200,000 volumes. The ceiling consists of seven cupolas, decorated with frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte showing the stages of human knowledge up to the high point of Divine Revelation. Light is provided by 48 windows and is reflected by the original colour scheme of gold and white. The architecture and design express the ideals of the Enlightenment, against which the sculptures by Joseph Stammel of “The Four Last Things” make a striking contrast.” (Wikipedia)
“The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (German: Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. Construction took place between 1745 and 1754, and the interior was decorated with frescoes and with stuccowork in the tradition of the Wessobrunner School.
In 1738, tears were seen on a dilapidated wooden figure of the Scourged Saviour. This miracle resulted in a pilgrimage rush to see the sculpture. In 1740, a small chapel was built to house the statue but it was soon realized that the building would be too small for the number of pilgrims it attracted, and so Steingaden Abbey decided to commission a separate shrine. Many who have prayed in front of the statue of Jesus on the altar, have claimed that people have been miraculously cured of their diseases, which has made this church even more of a pilgrimage site.
The Wieskirche was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1983 and underwent extensive restoration between 1985 and 1991.” (Wikipedia)
