Balthasar Neumann was manic, daring, brilliant. The fact that the trained craftsman is responsible for the grand finale in the history of European palace construction – the Residenz am Main – may be known to many. Other less.
Anyone who looks at the stately buildings of great electors and archbishops in the former Holy Empire and compares them with the Würzburg Residence must be puzzled. Of course, there were also outstanding representative buildings in the once leading imperial territories. But when in 1981 UNESCO awarded a palace a world heritage title as the first non-sacred building in Germany, this title simply did not go to the said territories, the centers of secular power in the Old Kingdom. But to Würzburg.