Rückermainhof

The Rückermainhof rises in Würzburg as a baroque building of red and yellow sandstone. Joseph Greissing built it between 1716 and 1719. The client was the Ritterstift St. Burkard, a college of secular canons that had grown out of the city's old Benedictine monastery. Strong cornices divide the storeys, with Tuscan pilasters below and Ionic and Corinthian orders above.

The site itself reaches back much further than the baroque. The earliest record shows Abbot Friedericus buying the plot for the monastery in 1260. By the mid-fifteenth century the estate had become the seat of the newly founded Stift. The dean lived on the first floor, with sales rooms below him. Early in the eighteenth century the structure was so dilapidated that a complete rebuild became necessary. Costs and disputes over the footprint delayed the work, and Greissing died in 1721 before completion. His successor, Balthasar Neumann, then made small adjustments to the plans to settle the open questions.

The facade repays a slow look: round-arched display windows rest on rusticated pillars, their keystones carved with angel heads. Paired Doric half-columns frame the portal of the central projection, and a triangular pediment caps the first-floor window above. Saint Burkard and Saint Andreas stand in stone on its corners, recalling the foundation's origins in the Andreaskloster. Jakob van der Auwera created the sculptural work. Allegorical figures of Faith and Justice stand at the highest point. The crowning pediment carries the arms of Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Greiffenclau Vollraths, with a vase at its apex. After the secularization of 1803 the district court and the revenue offices moved in. The facade and its decoration survived the bombing of Würzburg in March 1945, so you can still trace every figure today.