What is Baroque?

For this Baroqueblockbuster episode, Constantin Pelka goes to Schloss Schleißheim — thirty minutes north of Munich, a palace most visitors to the city never find — to answer the question of what baroque actually is, with two experts from the castle administration. The concepts emerge through the rooms themselves: the Enfilade, a 160-metre sight line through successive doorways that is the longest in any German palace and surpasses even Versailles; eight console tables in the great gallery that are technically sculpture rather than furniture, built from glued and carved blocks of wood with only front legs because the wall carries the rest of the weight; and the parade bed at the climax of the Electoral apartments, where the Levée and Couchée took place — the ceremonial dressing and undressing of the prince, witnessed each morning by the assembled court. Max Emanuel had seen Louis XIV perform this ritual in person, and brought the logic back to Bavaria.