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selenakYours truly has resumed her life of travel. Today I am in lovely, lovely Innsbruck, Austria, where sunshine and fresh snow compete with Austrian baroque at its finest. Have a gander below the cut.
Have an overview first:
On the right corner, you can see the city's signature piece, the golden rooflet (Goldenes Dachl). See it more close up:
Long distance goldenes Dachl, with silver living statue:
And now for some Innsbruck streets and buildings, several old town houses that used to belong to rich merchants and nobility:
Old Tyrolian Parliament:
And the point you can tell someone was impressed with Napoleon and had to have their very own arc de triomphe:
For the Sound of Music fans:
The tomb of Maximilian I. in the Hofkirche boasts of being the most impressive imperial tomb around. While I would plead the cause of some tombs in Speyer, it IS pretty impressive. Maximilian had ordered black statues of his ancestors, real and mythical, to surround himself. (The ultimate irony being that his remains aren't in the tomb. They're with the rest of the Habsburg bones in Vienna. Don't ask.) A word about Maximilian: he was nicknamed "the last knight" because of his fondness for tournaments but was actually the first ruler to win his battles by canons. A good patron of the arts, really successful in his marriage policy (that was when the "tu, felix Austria, nube" idea came into being), with the net result that by the time he died, his grandson, Emperor Charles V., inherited the original "Empire in which the sun never sets", which was named thus centuries before the Brits stole the phrase. (The Victorians were such upstarts.) Later emperors were appropriately grateful and made sure Maximilian's tomb got finished, statues and all:
I had a look at some of those statues. As you'd expect, there were a lot of Habsburgs, but also one man who brought me to a startled second glance. The inscription didn't change. Behold Arthur, King of the Britons:
Just how Maximilian figured he was related to the once and future king, I have no idea. More understandable is the presence of his unfortunate daughter in law, Juana la Lorca, aka she who was screwed over by her husband, father (wily old Ferdinand of Aragorn, who had no intention of relinsquishing Castile to his daughter, never mind it was her inheritance from her mother Isabella, not his), and son (Charles V, who also really wanted that not sun setting empire with the Americas, thanks a lot, mother, and be declared mad some more):
The actual tomb:
The Hofkirche isn't that big, incidentally. The local cathedral is called St. James.
St. James, outside and inside:
The town seen from the river:
And have one more overview:
Have an overview first:
On the right corner, you can see the city's signature piece, the golden rooflet (Goldenes Dachl). See it more close up:
Long distance goldenes Dachl, with silver living statue:
And now for some Innsbruck streets and buildings, several old town houses that used to belong to rich merchants and nobility:
Old Tyrolian Parliament:
And the point you can tell someone was impressed with Napoleon and had to have their very own arc de triomphe:
For the Sound of Music fans:
The tomb of Maximilian I. in the Hofkirche boasts of being the most impressive imperial tomb around. While I would plead the cause of some tombs in Speyer, it IS pretty impressive. Maximilian had ordered black statues of his ancestors, real and mythical, to surround himself. (The ultimate irony being that his remains aren't in the tomb. They're with the rest of the Habsburg bones in Vienna. Don't ask.) A word about Maximilian: he was nicknamed "the last knight" because of his fondness for tournaments but was actually the first ruler to win his battles by canons. A good patron of the arts, really successful in his marriage policy (that was when the "tu, felix Austria, nube" idea came into being), with the net result that by the time he died, his grandson, Emperor Charles V., inherited the original "Empire in which the sun never sets", which was named thus centuries before the Brits stole the phrase. (The Victorians were such upstarts.) Later emperors were appropriately grateful and made sure Maximilian's tomb got finished, statues and all:
I had a look at some of those statues. As you'd expect, there were a lot of Habsburgs, but also one man who brought me to a startled second glance. The inscription didn't change. Behold Arthur, King of the Britons:
Just how Maximilian figured he was related to the once and future king, I have no idea. More understandable is the presence of his unfortunate daughter in law, Juana la Lorca, aka she who was screwed over by her husband, father (wily old Ferdinand of Aragorn, who had no intention of relinsquishing Castile to his daughter, never mind it was her inheritance from her mother Isabella, not his), and son (Charles V, who also really wanted that not sun setting empire with the Americas, thanks a lot, mother, and be declared mad some more):
The actual tomb:
The Hofkirche isn't that big, incidentally. The local cathedral is called St. James.
St. James, outside and inside:
The town seen from the river:
And have one more overview:
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