Inevitably, the very first thing you do upon coming into Weissenstein Palace is lookup. Every thing simply past the elaborately welded wrought iron gates lifts your gaze: symmetrical grand staircases, a promenade supported by Corinthian columns, and arches of various sizes extending from the promenade railing to the ceiling. The principle occasion is an impressive fresco conceived in brilliant blues, powdery pinks, and sunny yellows, painted by Giovanni Francesco Marchini, broadly considered a grasp of Baroque phantasm portray, and the Swiss painter and gallerist Johann Rudolf Byss. Apollo dominates its middle on a chariot pulled by 4 white horses. Cherubim path garlands of flowers previous peacocks and cranes. Hermes floats over a puffy pink cloud; Artemis over the moon, stag and doe in tow. It’s ringed by an impressive trompe l’oeil of a painted balcony, over which a dizzying array of characters peer towards the bottom. The painted fringe of a sultan’s carpet drapes over the cornice for added impact.

It’s solely pure that upon coming into this corridor within the second episode of The Empress, Elisabeth (Devrim Lignau) does precisely this, eyes extensive with surprise. The digital camera follows her gaze right into a rotating shot of the fresco whereas the music swells. Launched in September and throughout six episodes, Netflix’s burning romantic drama traces the engagement and early marriage of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth (famously referred to as Sisi) with a lightweight historic hand. He’s formidable and decided to modernize his empire whereas doing proper by his individuals; she’s a free spirit raised removed from court docket life and much too sensible for it. In the meantime the Russians are looming on the border, the unwashed lots on the gates, and second-born Archduke Maximilian within the palace halls plotting treason with highly effective allies. It’s the stuff of luxurious interval items—this explicit one, because it occurs, by manufacturing designer Matthias Müsse.

Müsse visited roughly 20 castles throughout Germany looking for The Empress’ Schönbrunn, considered one of two sprawling Vienna palaces residence to the real-life Franz and Elisabeth. The true Schönbrunn, which Müsse visited particularly to resolve “what we had been going to make incorrect, in a way,” was far too purple and rococo for the blues-heavy and baroque aesthetic he’d chosen. He additionally wished a palace that was properly preserved however not museum-y. Weissenstein match the invoice. “You possibly can see the outdated materials on the partitions. You possibly can see the filth on the railings,” he says. “This used look is essential to make it much more plausible that this household is actually outdated and highly effective, and [that] they’re combating to remain like that.”

Weissenstein Palace is a great distance from Schönbrunn, however solely about 20 minutes outdoors Bamberg, a river city in northern Bavaria well-known for its fantastically preserved medieval format and structure. It’s surrounded by low, tree-covered hills and swaths of inexperienced farmland, set again from the winding highway by stone partitions and big gates. Building on the residence started in 1711, with cash Lothar Franz von Schönborn, the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg and Archbishop-Elector of Mainz, acquired from Charles VI, whom he’d helped maneuver onto the throne after Joseph I died with out a male inheritor. Overseen by von Schönborn himself and a number of architects (together with Habsburg court docket architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt), building took seven years and elevated the standing of the encircling space, since importing a small military of craftsmen, hydraulic engineers, painters, and sculptors to the agricultural city of Possenhoffen was neither low cost nor straightforward.