Propylaea

About this place

The Propylaea is a massive Doric gateway closing the western end of Koenigsplatz, designed by Leo von Klenze and built between 1854 and 1862 on the model of the gate to the Athenian Acropolis. It was never a city gate in any defensive sense but a political monument: King Ludwig I wanted it to mark his son Otto's accession to the throne of Greece in 1832, after the war of independence against the Ottomans. History being what it is, Otto was deposed in the very year the gate was finished. The whole of Koenigsplatz is one architectural idea. Ludwig I set out to build an Athens on the Isar, and gave its three sides the three Greek orders — the Propylaea Doric to the west, the Glyptothek Ionic to the north, the antiquities building Corinthian to the south. The sculpture in the gate's pediments is by Ludwig Schwanthaler and shows scenes from the Greek uprising. The square has a darker chapter. In the 1930s its ground was paved over entirely with granite slabs to serve as a Nazi parade ground, and two temples were raised on it for the dead of the 1923 putsch. The temples were blown up after the war, leaving their bases, and in 1988 the granite was lifted and the lawns restored, returning the square to something like its original form. Today it is open green space where people sit; the gate is looked at and photographed, not entered. Twenty minutes is enough, and two museums are a few steps away.