Brunnenhof der Residenz München

Carriages once turned in this courtyard of the Munich Residenz. At its centre stands the early seventeenth-century bronze fountain crowned by a figure of Otto of Wittelsbach from which the Brunnenhof takes its name, and the palace walls that enclose it hold the sound in — an accident of architecture that has made the court one of the city's favoured open-air auditoriums. As many as 1,600 people can be seated there for the summer season, which mixes symphonic evenings, film-music nights and staged programmes. Orff's Carmina Burana, whose medieval texts came from the Bavarian abbey of Benediktbeuern, has been among the works heard within the walls.