The fame of Bruchsal Palace is based on its inner rooms with their masterful room conceptions and decorations. The center section of the Hauptbau is reached through the entrance hall (Intrada), an antechamber surrounded by Doric columns. In addition to the sculptured cornices, all other parts of the architecture are not three-dimensional, but rather illusionary paintings. The ceiling painting depicts the victory of the secular and theological virtues over the vices. The grotto lies in the middle of the staircase, which rises up in ovals located on the sides. The different impressions imparted by the room combine with the fantastic paintings created by the fresco painter Giovanni Francesco Marchini to form a subtly decorated vault.
The grotto lies in the middle of the staircase, which rises up in ovals located on the sides. The different impressions imparted by the room combine with the fantastic paintings created by the fresco painter Giovanni Francesco Marchini to form a subtly decorated vault.
This room is connected to the Garden Hall (Sala Terrena), which leads to the palace terrace and into the garden. As in the grotto, illusionary painting and mock architecture combine here to form a splendid room over which Mount Olympus is portrayed in the ceiling painting.
The staircase of Bruchsal Palace is an architectural high point, is considered the "queen of all staircases", and gradually rises up with two arched stairways out of the rather shadowy areas of the grotto into the bright top floor. Here the visitor finally stands on an island-like platform from which two bridges lead into the halls opposite each other. Above all this arches the broad dome flooded with direct and indirect light, adorned with an allegorical ceiling painting portraying the history of the bishopric of Speyer.
Other state-rooms include the "Fürstensaal" (Prince's Hall), in which the stuccoworker Johann Michael Feuchtmayr and the painter Johannes Zick worked under the direction of Balthasar Neumann between 1751 and 1754. Portraits of the prince bishops of Speyer hang here. The baroque Fürstensaal leads into the grandest of the three banquet halls, the "Marmorsaal" (Marble Hall). With the coloration and material of its appointments, with its five high window recesses and its dissolving decoration at the transition from the walls to the ceiling, it presents a refined picture of rococo art at its peak.
Following the death of Cardinal Christoph von Hutten and the end of the Age of Absolutism, Bruchsal Palace lost its important and influential position. After ecclesiastical property passed into secular hands with secularization in 1803, Speyer fell to the Baden dynasty. From 1810 to 1832 the widowed Margravine Amalie von Baden lived in the northern part of the palace. Following her death, the palace stood empty for many decades. After the disastrous bombing in March 1945, the city and palace in Bruchsal lay virtually in ruins. In the years that followed what was left of the palace deteriorated noticeably. Since 1964 the state of Baden-Württemberg has devoted itself to restoring the palace (see Restoration).