Theatiner Church, Munich

If I had it to do over again, I would have let my fascination with the tower finials on this church pull me in through the door to learn more; as it was, time was short, we were tired, and the rest of the story is part of why Munich is high on my revisit list.

The fact is, the towers weren’t even part of the original plan. They were a sort of ‘show-off’ by the original architect who was fired or quit as the shell of the church neared completion; there were ‘violent discussions’ involving the architect, the site manager and the Queen’s confessor, a Theatine priest.

The original architect, Agostino Barelli, was brought from Rome for the job, and based the church’s overall design on the mother church of the Theatine order, Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome. The church was meant as a gesture of thanks by the royal couple after the long-awaited birth of an heir in 1663.

^{Lutiger/Wikimedia}

After Barelli’s firing, Enrico Zuccalli took over and added the raised dome you can see above, and the two flamboyant towers. The facade was finished only in 1768. The church as a whole and its semi-Mediterranean styling, proved to be a long-lasting influence on hundreds of other churches of the German Baroque.