Weimar Afternoon Anna Amalia's Wittumpalais and The Stastschlossmuseum

Next I went to visit the Herzogin Anna Amalia of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach's Wittumspalais. (I think that means the palace she retired to when she became a widow.) She lived there from 117 until she died in 1807.

As you enter you pass by this sedan chair in Rococo style. (Evidently not used that much.)

This is the so-called Round Table Room.  Anna Amalia was quite the entertainer and she invited many artists, scholars and members of the court to her home both before and after she moved to her widow's palace.

 

This is the central hall and portrays many of the notable visitors.

 

Here is her bedroom.

 

For some reason I was particulary impressed by this par of shoes. They don't even know if or how much she wore them, but they are so pretty and I really like the shaping.

 

This is a design of her little Pavillion done in the Chinese style.)

 

This is the most authentic room in the house, the green parlor. The landscapes may be a reminder of Anna Amalia's trip to Italy.

 
 

The duchess loved to play music and even composed. She also loved to draw and disagreed with Goethe and his crew about artists and art viewers needing to be trained to appreciate good art. She studied art but also recognized her limits but still did art the way she wanted to do it.

This is the court yard and garden outside her home.

This festival hall is painted rather than being real marble.  It is still impressive and is composed of three rooms set together. The ceiling thus has two levels.

I think this is the first red parlour on the ground floor. It is dominated by this large sculpture.

The second red parlor was called the Poet's room because it has portraits of Goethe and Schiller.

When we finished the tour I thought I saw Anna Amalia running through the streets!

 

Going down the Schiller street there was this group of young Christians singing about Jesus.



Carriage rides are available just like in most other tourist cities.

 

I was hungry and had carefully checked to find a cafe that would take my credit card and so I settled on the Residenz Cafe. Of course it took me forever to find the place. (Yes, I went the wrong direction several times!)

 

 

Here is the interior of the Cafe.



I ordered a tradional Thuringian Grill plate that was delicious.

 

It was huge and I was starved, but I secretly took some of it home, because I certainly didn't want to waste any of it. (It made a great lunch sandwich on the following day.)

The next Museum was the City Castle Museum.  Here is the courtyard.



What a marvelous collection of notable art objects! There were famous Dürer and Cranach paintings.



You might recognize this guy:



There were some gorgeous furniture pieces.




and of course both Romanesque and Gothic piece from the middle ages.

This little ivory piece was beautifully executed.

I won't spend a lot of time writing about the pictures, but the museum ran from the earliest Christian years into the 50s.

This is a copy of a French statue by Jean Francois Houdon that I am very familiar with: La Frileuse. (I have a very bad copy in my garden.)

The museum had all manner of objects from furniture to paintings.

 

Some of the work came from the 20th century and was a bit dubious, but still interesting.

For some reason I rliked the one below. The colors worked very nicely together.

 

 

So after the museum it was time to head home and eat some dinner.