What You Should Know about Versailles: Leonhard Christoph Sturm’s Die zum Vergnügen der Reisenden geöffnete Baumeister-Academie

Abstract

Almost two decades before his Architectonische Reise-Anmerckungen (Architectural Travel Notes), published in 1719, the German architectural theorist Leonhard Christoph Sturm published another ‘guide’ for construction-related travel studies, which, however, received far less attention in the relevant research. Die zum Vergnügen der Reisenden Geöffnete Baumeister-Academie (first edition, Hamburg, 1700/1702) is mainly addressed to the dilettante reader, primarily the young nobleman, and represents a summary of his teaching as professor at the Wolfenbüttel Ritterakademie. Based on this contextual background, the article examines the importance of Versailles in particular in Sturm’s canon of buildings worth seeing and studying, and the differences that become evident in comparison with the Architectonische Reise-Anmerckungen.

Keywords

• Sturm (Leonhard Christoph)
• Versailles
• Paris
• Wolfenbüttel
• Ritterakademie
• knights’ academy