Almost every city’s version of Art Nouveau architecture is a bit different, I’ve found, and Munich is no exception. It’s got the swirling bits of nature forms, elaborate and often myth-basic decoration and more—but two bits stood out for me as I wandered the streets last summer: Lots of bright color, and a seeming unwillingness to go asymmetrical in any noticeable way.
Let’s start with the so-called Adam and Eve house, of ‘Garden of Eden’—obvious how it got those names!—on Ainmiller Street in Schwabing, the best district of the city for finding the style. Neighbors are said to have been shocked by the art when it was first revealed, perhaps because it doesn’t look as if bad things are going to come from that apple.
While the Bible lesson is just above the door, you’ll have to look up—way up—to see some of the other special features, including the polychrome teardrops at the very top, and just below it the very formidable face of either a woman or a warrior. You’ll have to make up your own mind; I’m still not sure. Perhaps a woman warrior…
Practically across the street is a building now housing the Bookworm Nursery School in addition to apartments. The double arch at the door looks as if it were intended for a double door, but nothing I’ve found indicates it ever was. The face above the door is meant to be the Green Man, a symbol of rebirth.
The building as a whole isn’t very exciting, although it’s known for the reliefs on the wall and at the eaves, and also for its penthouse, which features reliefs of two trees that appear to be growing from one floor to the next behind the stucco.
Around another corner onto Römerstrasse and we find ‘The Egyptian House,’ which despite some Egyptian-themed decorations manages to include Narcissus, endlessly staring into a mirror, just to the right of the doorway. Nonetheless, the owner was obsessed with Egypt, and the architects generally complied.
Down the block from Egypt is another symmetrical—almost—confection, notable mainly for its colorful roof-level cartouche.
Not far away, a definitely Art Nouveau door set in a very not-so building. There’s quite a bit of that to be found, possibly later additions by owners trying to keep up with new styles. Following that, a lovely tiled doorway on a building without much else to be said for its exterior.
Our next stop is at a house that doesn’t have an actual street address; it’s one of a row of houses that open off a pathway at the edge of Leopold Park. It starts with a pair of peacocks framing the top-floor window, and just cascades down with more, mostly fruit and leaves.
Under the balcony they look almost as if you could reach up and help yourself to some.
And then a whimsical door to finish it off…
Speaking of whimsical doorways, here’s a pair of porch pillars just around the corner, and what was once a service entrance but is now the doorway to a bicycle storeroom.
A less-symmetical building with modest color but most unusual windows…
On Leopoldstrasse, here’s a building with an asymmetrical facade, and a wealth of small ceramic ornaments, many of which wouldn’t be out of place on a Christmas tree.
Around the corner and down the street a bit on Georgenstrasse—a street with 37 listed historic buildings on it—is Bissing Palace, or, to some, the Portrait Palace, for obvious reasons.
And, across the Isar river from the rest of the bunch, our last building for today, a veritable castle on a street lined with houses on large lots. It is Villa Bechtolscheim, and is said to be the first Jugendstil, or Art Nouveau, house in Germany. It was built in 1896 for Baron Clemens von Bechtolscheim, but the date makes it more likely to be the oldest surviving than the oldest, and that would have to exclude apartment and commercial buildings as well.
There’s more Art Nouveau to be seen in Munich—including a public bathhouse, the Mullersches Volksbad, that is still in use.
Great tour!