Maximilianeum: Parliament and Scholars on the High Bank
Why is it significant?
Stand at the foot of the ramps and look up at the long façade of arches crowning the high riverbank, with gold mosaics glinting in the upper windows. From down here it seems to float above the trees of the slope.
Key Facts
| Place | Maximilianeum: Parliament and Scholars on the High Bank |
|---|---|
| Address | Max-Planck-Straße 1, 81675 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.13640, 11.59440 |
| Part of Walk | River and Meadow: Munich's Isar, the Angel of Peace & the English Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the foot of the ramps and look up at the long façade of arches crowning the high riverbank, with gold mosaics glinting in the upper windows. From down here it seems to float above the trees of the slope. Turn around, and you will see why it was built exactly here: it closes the long, straight vista of Maximilianstraße, running all the way from the old town.
This is the Maximilianeum, commissioned by King Maximilian the Second and built from 1857 to 1874 by the architect Friedrich Bürklein. Maximilian wanted his own style, neither Greek like his father Ludwig's buildings nor Gothic, but a new blend for a new age. He did not live to see it finished; he died in 1864, ten years before the last stone was set.
What the king did see clearly was its purpose. The Maximilianeum was built as a home for a foundation for the most gifted young people of Bavaria, regardless of their family's wealth. And here is the surprise: the foundation still exists. Exceptional students still live in this building for free while they study at Munich's universities, under the same roof as... the parliament.
Because since 1949 the Maximilianeum has also been the seat of the Bavarian Landtag, the state parliament. After the destruction of the war, Bavaria needed a house for its new democracy, and it found one in a royal school for talent. So the students have lawmakers for neighbours, and the lawmakers work above a gallery of historic paintings that the king commissioned to show the great moments of world history.
Along the slopes below you stretch the Maximiliansanlagen, park gardens laid out on the steep bank in the second half of the nineteenth century, with winding paths and old trees. They are the green hinge between the river and the city on the hill. Now follow the paths north through these gardens along the high bank, and watch for a golden figure rising on a column above the trees.