Photochrome printing was a technique developed in the late 19th century that added vivid color to black-and-white photographs using lithographic inks. The results were striking — almost painterly — and the prints produced of Bavaria during the 1890s rank among the most detailed visual records of the region ever made. They show Germany’s largest state at a specific, unrepeatable moment: just before the 20th century reshaped its cities, roads, and way of life.
The Bavarian countryside appears in these prints with remarkable clarity. Villages like Bad Kohlgrub sit quietly beneath the foothills of the Alps, surrounded by open meadows and dense woodland. To the southeast, the Watzmann — the third-highest peak in Germany — towers over the town of Berchtesgaden, its rocky face rising sharply above the valley floor.
Bavaria’s rivers defined its towns just as much as its mountains. In Bamberg, the Regnitz winds past the Benedictine monastery of Michaelsberg, while the town’s Old City Hall sits on a narrow island in the middle of the river — one of the most unusual civic buildings in Germany. Würzburg’s Old Main Bridge, lined with Baroque sandstone statues of saints, carried pedestrians and carts across the Main River in a scene that had changed little in centuries.
Nuremberg, Bavaria’s second-largest city in the 1890s, fills several of the photochrome prints. Its imperial castle dominates the skyline from the west, while the Hangman Bridge — named for the executioner who once lived nearby — spans a quiet stretch of the city’s old moat. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit, built on a bridge over the Pegnitz River, and the Pegnitz riverbank with its synagogue visible in the distance, show a medieval city still very much intact.
Munich, the state capital, presents a different kind of energy. The Karlsplatz — known locally as the Stachus — appears in two prints: one looking toward the Central Station, the other toward the newly completed Palace of Justice. Trams and pedestrians fill the square, and the city’s broad boulevards reflect the rapid urban growth Bavaria’s capital experienced throughout the late 19th century. The Hofbräuhaus, one of Munich’s most famous beer halls, is captured both from the street and inside its open courtyard.
The small town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, with its well-preserved medieval walls and half-timbered buildings, is represented by a photochrome of its Renaissance city hall. Nearby, Oberammergau — famous throughout Europe for its Passion Play — features the Gasthof zum Bayerischen Löwen, an inn whose painted facade reflected the region’s tradition of Lüftlmalerei, or exterior fresco painting.
At Bad Kissingen, a spa town in Lower Franconia, the photochromes capture the Rakoczy Festival — a public celebration centered on the famous Rakoczy mineral spring. Visitors dressed in their finest clothes gathered at the spa’s ornate facilities, a reminder that Bad Kissingen was one of the most fashionable resort destinations in 19th-century Europe, drawing royalty and aristocracy from across the continent. At Bayreuth, the Wagner Festspielhaus — built specifically to perform Richard Wagner’s operas — stands apart from the city on a low hill, its plain brick exterior contrasting sharply with the grand music staged within.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who died in 1886 just years before these photochromes were made, left behind an extraordinary architectural legacy. Linderhof Palace in Upper Bavaria, the only one of his three palaces he lived to see completed, houses a series of Gobelin tapestries in rooms of extraordinary ornamental detail. The Königshaus on the Schachen — a modest alpine retreat Ludwig used for his birthday each August — sits high in the mountains above Garmisch, its Turkish-style interior hidden behind an unassuming wooden exterior.
Neuschwanstein Castle, Ludwig’s most ambitious project, receives the most extensive coverage in the photochrome series. The exterior view shows the castle perched on a rocky outcrop above the village of Hohenschwangau, its white limestone towers rising against the forested Alps. Inside, every room was decorated around themes drawn from the operas of Richard Wagner, whom Ludwig idolized. The Singers’ Hall — never used for a performance during Ludwig’s lifetime — was designed to mirror the hall at Wartburg Castle, the setting for Wagner’s Tannhäuser. The Throne Room, modeled on a Byzantine basilica, was left unfinished at Ludwig’s death; the throne itself was never installed. Individual studies and drawing rooms depict scenes from the Tannhäuser saga, the Lohengrin saga, and the Tristan story in elaborate murals and carved woodwork. The dining room is lined with portraits of minnesingers — the medieval German poet-musicians whose tradition Wagner had drawn on heavily in his compositions.
