Antique-style sculptures at the Renaissance castle

“Renaissance” means rebirth. Programmatic for the era is the return to and glorification of Greek and Roman antiquity as an idealized age in contrast to the Middle Ages.

Accordingly, the Italian architect of the citadel, Alessandro Pasqualini, used numerous architectural elements closely based on antiquity in the construction of the castle fortress from 1548 onwards. Some of these have survived the centuries and can still be admired today. With its monumental vaulted cellars and facade structures with alternating brick and natural stone layers, the building is fundamentally linked to Roman building traditions, as preserved in Trier, for example.

Above the city-side portal inside the citadel is a richly ornamented relief depicting the Roman goddess of fertility, Ceres. Her attributes are a fruit bowl and sheaves of wheat, and she is flanked by cornucopias representing the wealth and abundance of the United Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg and the builder, Duke William V. Opposite, two pedestals indicate the former south gate to the castle’s inner courtyard. The bases are decorated with trophies displaying captured weapons in the ancient style.

The exterior of the castle chapel is adorned with a frieze featuring bucrania and triglyph stones as part of the Doric order of the facade decoration on the ground floor. The wreath-adorned bull’s heads refer to ancient sacrificial rites, which seemed appropriate as decorative elements of Greek and Roman temples for the construction of a Christian chapel. The three floors of the castle chapel facade are divided by pillars and columns with Doric, Ionic, and composite capitals based on ancient models. The interior of the castle chapel is also decorated with a frieze of triglyphs and bucrania, as well as Ionic columns on the piano nobile.

All of the antique-style architectural elements can be viewed in detail in the museum exhibition in the castle cellar, where casts are on display. A virtual reconstruction brings the former castle complex and its reception of antiquity to life: https://bit.ly/juelich-virtuell