Käppele — Pilgrimage in Rococo Form
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Transcript
The Käppele, formally the pilgrimage church of the Visitation, was designed by Balthasar Neumann in the eighteenth century. It sits above the city at the end of a processional route marked by Stations of the Cross. That approach is essential to understanding the church. Pilgrimage is movement turned into devotion.
Inside, Rococo decoration can seem almost weightless, but its purpose was emotional and theatrical. Architecture, sculpture, stucco and ritual worked together to transform arrival into experience. The church shows a different side of the same Catholic culture that produced the Residence: there, magnificence served princely government; here, it served popular devotion.