A brief walk through Stuttgart city center
Lately, I spent a couple of hours in the Stuttgart city center. As it was a bright Saturday morning with no clouds in the sky at all, I focused mainly on some indoor shots.
I started at the metro station Schlossplatz. Driving and parking in Stuttgart is no fun. So it's a good idea to use one of the park & ride options and take one of the frequently running trains from there.
Not far from the metro station is the Stiftskirche [↗]. Even though the oldest parts of the church are reaching back to 1240 with a predecessor from the 10th or 11th century, the style of the church is more on the modern side. This is mainly because of the destruction during World War 2 and the reconstruction in the 1950s. Another major restoration took place in 1999.
You will not find great paintings or decorations. But it has some beautiful windows. The ones in the apse are colorful, while the ones along the nave are in black and white.
As it was Saturday morning the Marktstraße (German for market street) and surrounding places were used for an outdoor market. Near the end of the street is the department store Breuninger which has a champagne bar beneath a rotunda that at the time of my visit was decorated with butterflies. I don't think that they would allow the usage of a tripod, but I had no problems getting permission for some handheld shots.
Next stop, again only a few meters away was the main reason for my visit: The exhibition "Fumes & Perfumes". They use a pretty run-down, but still active parking garage as a venue to show large-scale photographs. I'll write a separate blog post with more details and pictures about it soon.
The 4th stop is a bit further away, but still within easy walking distance: The Staatsgalerie [↗], which is the most important art museum in town. I stayed outside and in fact, I took the pictures two weeks earlier. This time I just walked by and as I didn't see anything new, I left the camera in my bag.
Last stop and close to the starting point was the shopping center Königsbau Passagen. There is one passage that is worth taking pictures of, but you have to be really patient to get a shot without too many people walking around.
The second spot to take pictures is upstairs in the mall itself. Here you need a wide-angle lens to get the type of pictures I show here. Mine are shot with a 12mm lens on a full-frame sensor.
All in all, this is a really nice, relaxing walk. You also pass the New Palace, which might be worth taking pictures of too. But as said, I was there in the middle of the day on a bright and cloudless day. On top they were preparing for a Jazz event, so a lot of distracting cars would have made the shot impossible as well.
You can find a map of this walk here [↗].
