Palais Morass, Baroque palace in Old Town Heidelberg, Germany.
Palais Morass is a three-story Baroque town palace of red sandstone in Heidelberg's Old Town, built in 1712 by architect Johann Adam Breunig. Its facade is flanked by paired Corinthian columns around a round-arched portal, with the first-floor balcony resting above three rows of windows. Inside, an open Baroque staircase on the right of the entrance passage leads to the upper floors.
Johann Philipp von Morass, rector of Heidelberg University, commissioned this building in 1712 on the site of a former hospital. A century later, a banquet hall was added between 1778 and 1780, blending Baroque with Louis XVI style.
Since 1906 the palace has housed the Kurpfälzisches Museum. Its core is the collection of Heidelberg antiquities assembled by Count Charles de Graimberg. The Heidelberg Kunstverein occupies a glazed extension behind the museum garden, added in 1991.
The museum entrance is through the baroque portal on Hauptstraße; the open staircase on the right of the passage leads to the upper floors. A glass extension behind the museum garden, added in 1991, holds further departments and the Heidelberg Kunstverein. The ground floor housed a bank until 1926.
The museum's founding collection came from Count Charles de Graimberg, who gathered Heidelberg antiquities. Since 1991 a glass extension behind the museum garden has housed further departments and the Heidelberg Kunstverein, so part of the institution sits in a modern structure rather than the Baroque palace itself.
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