Garden Museum

Room 5 – Water in gardens

Water is one of the most important elements of garden design: in the words of the Friedrich Ludwig Sckell, who was in charge of the Bavarian Court Gardens in the early 19th century, it was the "soul of a garden". Garden designers frequently went to great lengths to conduct water into gardens and present it in many different forms . The Nymphenburg Palace Park in Munich is an excellent example of the various ways in which water can be used.

The formal gardens of Nymphenburg were created by order of the Bavarian Elector Max Emanuel between 1701 and 1726. At the beginning of the 19th century, King Maximilian I turned the complex into a landscape park, retaining, however, the Baroque central axis. For this reason Nymphenburg still has striking water features from both the formal and landscape phases of its development.