Würzburg Residence with the Court Gardens and Residence Square

Until the early 18th century the Prince-Bishops of Würzburg lived in the Marienberg Fortress on a hill west of the Main. Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn, who became prince-bishop in 1719, won 600,000 florins in a court case that year and put the money into a palace to match Versailles or Schönbrunn. The foundation stone was laid on 22 May 1720, and the court architect Balthasar Neumann led the work.

Lukas von Hildebrandt of Vienna and Robert de Cotte and Germain Boffrand of Paris also contributed designs, and the shell was finished in December 1744. In the early 1750s the Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his sons painted the ceiling over the staircase, about 580 square metres, the largest continuous ceiling fresco in the world. The building cost more than 1.5 million guilders, at a time when a day labourer earned one guilder a week.

A British air raid on 16 March 1945 burnt out almost the whole building, but Neumann's stone vaults held, and the central block with the staircase and the Imperial Hall survived. Rebuilding lasted from 1945 to 1987 and cost about 20 million euros. The Residence, its Court Gardens and Residence Square were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1981.