Photo credits: who took the photographs of the Residenz
Seven photographs on this site are somebody else’s work, taken from Wikimedia Commons and made by five different people. Five of them carry Creative Commons licences that let anyone reuse them and require that the maker is named; the rest are released under CC0, which asks for nothing at all, and are credited here anyway. This page names every one, links each back to its own file page on Commons, and states the licence it is used under.
Which pictures on this site are real, and which are props
Only the ones in the table below are photographs of the Residenz. Everything else you will see here — blank tickets on a wooden counter, an audio handset on a stone bench, a brass cloakroom tag, red velvet, gilt braid, a violin on a chair, an open score, a row of empty seats — was made for this site. Not one of those pictures has a building or a room in it, and not one of them is captioned as though it did.
That line was drawn deliberately and it is worth saying why. The rooms at this address exist nowhere else: 66 metres of barrel vault in the Antiquarium, ten rooms of treasury, four tiers of carved rococo boxes in the theatre. A made picture of a baroque hall is a picture of a palace that has never existed, and putting one under a heading naming a real building would be a lie in a small font. So the props illustrate arguments — three tickets, a free handset, a bag that will not fit through the door, an hour of music — and the photographs do the identifying.
Where the seven appear
Six of them run in one strip on the home page: the front from inside the courtyard on the Max-Joseph-Platz side, the Antiquarium, Kunigunde’s crown in the Schatzkammer, the carved boxes of the Cuvilliés Theatre, the Dianatempel out in the free Hofgarten, and the Ancestral Gallery. That strip is three columns wide, which is why it holds a multiple of three and not all of them. The one left over is the Green Gallery in the Rich Rooms, and it sits on what is inside where it belongs. Every one carries its credit visibly on the page it appears on, as well as in the table here.
The photograph this site does not have
There is no picture of the Crown of Princess Blanche anywhere on this site, and that is the one absence worth explaining. It is the most quotable object in the building — described as the oldest surviving royal crown known to have been in England, and probably made for Anne of Bohemia before Blanche’s name attached to it — and every image of it I could find is somebody’s reserved copyright. Rather than crop something and hope, the treasury page describes it in words and the crown photographed here is Kunigunde’s, captioned as hers.
Every photograph, its maker and its licence
Every row here is generated out of the one list that also decides which file lands on which page. That is the only reliable way to stop a caption and its picture parting company after somebody swaps an image. Each file name links through to its own page on Commons, where the licence is set out in full.
| What it shows | Where it appears | File on Wikimedia Commons | Photographer | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Residenz from its own courtyard, on the Max-Joseph-Platz side | the home page | Exterior of Münchner Residenz 44.jpg | Wilfredor | CC0 |
| The Antiquarium, 66 metres of barrel vault built for Albrecht V's antique sculpture | the home page | Antiquarium (Hall of Antiquities), Munich Residenz.jpg | Jiuguang Wang | CC BY-SA 2.0 |
| The crown of Empress Kunigunde in the Schatzkammer | the home page | Crown of Queen Kunigunde - Treasury - Residenz - Munich - Germany 2017.jpg | José Luiz | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| The Cuvilliés Theatre, four tiers of carved boxes that spent the war in storage | the home page | Cuvilliés-Theater in Münchner Residenz.jpg | AuHaidhausen | CC BY 4.0 |
| The Dianatempel at the centre of the Hofgarten, which costs nothing to walk into | the home page | Dianatempel (München).jpg | AuHaidhausen | CC BY 4.0 |
| The Ancestral Gallery, gilded from end to end | the home page | Ancestral Gallery (Münchner Residenz).jpg | Wilfredor | CC0 |
| The Green Gallery in the Rich Rooms | what is inside | München-Altstadt Residenz Reiche Zimmer Grüne Galerie 315.jpg | GFreihalter | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
If you want to reuse one
Go to Commons for it rather than saving the copy served from here. The file page is where the licence lives and where the wording of the attribution it demands is written down, and CC BY-SA piles on a further condition: whatever you build out of the image has to travel under those same terms. This page hands you no permission of its own. It is a record of what five photographers permitted, and of this site keeping its half of that.
If you made one of these and would prefer it were not on this site, say so (here) and it is gone the same day.
Frequently asked questions
Are the pictures of the Munich Residenz on this site real photographs?
Those in the table are. They cover the courtyard front, the Antiquarium, a crown in the Schatzkammer, the rococo theatre, the Dianatempel out in the Hofgarten, the Ancestral Gallery and the Green Gallery, and between them they are what tells you which building this site is about. The rest of the pictures are still lifes made for the site — blank tickets, a handset, a cloakroom tag, cloth, a score — and no room or facade appears in a single one of them.
Do I have to credit a Creative Commons photograph?
For CC BY and CC BY-SA, yes: naming the maker is a condition of the licence, not a courtesy, and CC BY-SA also asks that anything you derive from the image is shared under the same terms. CC0 asks for nothing, and the two CC0 photographs here are credited anyway. Each file page on Commons states exactly what its own licence requires.
Why is there no photograph of the Crown of Princess Blanche?
Because every image of it that could be found is under reserved copyright rather than a licence that allows reuse. It is described in words on the treasury page instead, attributed to Wikipedia, and the crown photographed on this site is Empress Kunigunde’s, captioned as hers.
Can I use the other pictures on this site?
Please do not. They were made for this site and they are props rather than photographs of anything: blank tickets, an audio handset, a cloakroom tag, cloth and braid, a violin, a score, empty seats. They illustrate arguments this site makes, and they would illustrate nothing anywhere else.