Asam Church
— — a single bright room two brothers built into the wall of a street.
Not only on a wall.
“The Asamkirche is small, narrow, and almost hidden between the townhouses of Sendlinger Straße. The Asam brothers, Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin, built it between 1733 and 1746 as their own private chapel, joined to the house next door where Egid Quirin lived. Inside, the room is barely eight metres wide and stacks two stories of marble, gilt, and frescoed ceiling into a single late-Baroque rush of light. The street outside is busy with shoppers and trams. The door is unmarked enough that most people walk past it twice. — from the studio
Asam Church, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Asam Church, formally St. Johann Nepomuk, stands on Sendlinger Straße in Munich's Altstadt. It was designed and built between 1733 and 1746 by the brothers Cosmas Damian Asam, a fresco painter, and Egid Quirin Asam, a sculptor and stuccoist, on land they had purchased next to Egid Quirin's house. The brothers conceived the church as their private place of worship; only public pressure persuaded them to admit lay visitors. The dedication is to Saint John of Nepomuk, the Bohemian martyr canonised in 1729. The interior measures roughly eight metres wide and twenty-two metres long.
The Asams designed the room as a study in graded light. A concealed window above the high altar throws a directed beam on the figure of the Trinity, while the lower walls are kept in a warmer, redder glow from the side chapels. Cosmas Damian painted the ceiling fresco of the life of Saint John of Nepomuk; Egid Quirin executed the marble, stucco, and the dramatic figure of the dying saint above the entrance. The combination of Wessobrunn stucco, scagliola, and gold leaf creates the late-Baroque effect of a single luminous interior carved from one continuous material.
The church is open daily for visitors and remains an active parish. Entry is free. It is reached on foot from Marienplatz, about 500 metres north along Rosenstraße and Sendlinger Straße, or from the Sendlinger Tor U-Bahn station on lines U1, U2, U3, U6, U7, and U8, roughly 200 metres south. The interior is dim by design, and photography without flash is permitted. Sunday Mass and weekday services are held by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising; visitor access is suspended during liturgies.