François de Cuvilliés the Elder: Amalienburg

From France the Rococo style spread in the 1730s to the Catholic German-speaking lands, where it was adapted to a brilliant style of religious architecture that combined French elegance with south German fantasy as well as with a lingering Baroque interest in dramatic spatial and plastic effects. Some of the most beautiful of all Rococo buildings outside France are to be seen in Munich—for example, the refined and delicate Amalienburg (1734–39), in the park of Nymphenburg, and the Residenztheater (1750–53; rebuilt after World War II), both by François de Cuvilliés. Among the finest German Rococo pilgrimage churches are the Vierzehnheiligen  (1743–72), near Lichtenfels, in Bavaria, designed by Balthasar Neumann, and the Wieskirche  (begun 1745–54), near Munich, built by Dominikus Zimmermann and decorated by his elder brother Johann Baptist Zimmermann. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff and Johann Michael Fischer also created notable buildings in the style, which utilized a profusion of stuccowork  and other decoration.