Renaissance Architecture: Germany

For earlier German architecture, see Gothic Architecture: Germany.

The Renaissance reached Germany and Austria rather late. In Austria it followed the classical tradition more closely than in Germany, where native architects usually derived their inspiration from the same Flemish copybooks that guided Elizabethan and Jacobean architects in England; so that German buildings of the late 16th and early 17th centuries resemble contemporary English examples. They include the town halls of Augsburg (1615-20), Bremen, Leipzig (begun 1556), Molsheim, Paderborn, and Posen; the Marienkirche at Wolfenbuttel (begun 1607), additions to the Schloss at Heidelberg (1556), the Schloss at Aschaffenburg (1605-14), and those at Stuttgart and Wilhelmsburg. More Italian in appearance are the Schloss at Wolfenbuttel; St Michael's church, Munich (begun 1583); the Hofkirche at Neuburg; the Belvedere and the Micovna in the royal castle at Prague.

See also Renaissance architecture. For later German architecture, see baroque architecture: Germany and German architecture.