Massive baroque forms, cheerful rococo and elegant, cool classicism mark the exterior and the interior of the New Palace in Meersburg.
Due to the local topography, the New Palace on the narrow mountain ridge of Meersburg was unable to establish itself (as is ideally the case with a baroque palace) as an architectural reference point for the surrounding area. However, the architect does follow the principles of monumental baroque palace architecture. It divides the structure with middle and side "risalites" (building sections projecting from the main body of the building) and allows the "Pilasterordnung" (flat supports projecting from the wall, usually divided into sections like a column) on the lake facade to stand out more massively, thus characterizing this as the main facade. Such clear graduations in importance define baroque building.
Those who commissioned architects to design buildings during the Baroque age sought to immortalize themselves in idealistic portraits. The ceiling fresco in the stairwell, with the likeness of Prince Bishop Conrad von Rodt, is just such a "baroque heaven". It shows "Die Verherrlichung der fürstbischöflichen Regentschaft" (Glorification of the Prince Bishop's Regency), which treats the blossoming of the arts and sciences in the realm of light while the forces of darkness are banished as its central statement.
In the Rococo period people loved to divide up the surfaces of objects, and yes even the borders of rooms, into ornaments. The appointment with three-dimensional stuccowork is especially well-suited for this type of decoration. And the New Palace also contains masterpieces of ornamental plasterwork. Carlo Pozzi produced elegant, filigreed reliefs, which include not only genre paintings (everyday depictions), but also scenes of courtly gallantry.
Pozzi's "Kartuschen" (shield-like surfaces, i.e. ornament shapes surrounded by richly decorated frames) show him to be a representative of the late Rococo period; the contour is broken up into very lively individual small sweeps, bits of shells and C and S-sweeps.
In the age of Classicism the asymmetrically animated Rococo forms were tamed, and straightness and clarity were aspired to.
The expression of forms in the Banquet Hall and the rooms on the lake side of the 3rd floor announce the beginning of Classicism. Garlands or stuccowork Roman profiles of Cesar are references to the orientation toward the forms of classical antiquity. In the oaken wall panelings by Pierre Michel d’Ixnard the playful contours of the Rococo are replaced with moderate, gilded ornaments and rigid frames.