applied with better success to interior decoration, especially in the large halls of the castles and town-halls, and many of their ceilings were sumptuous and well-considered designs, deeply panelled, painted and gilded in wood or plaster. +CASTLES.+ The _Schloss_ or _Burg_ of the German prince or duke retained throughout the Renaissance many mediæval characteristics in plan and aspect. A large proportion of these noble residences were built upon foundations of demolished feudal castles, reproducing in a new dress the ancient round towers and vaulted guard-rooms and halls, as in the Hartenfels at Torgau, the Heldburg (both in Saxony), and the castle of Trausnitz, in Bavaria, among many others. The +Castle+ at +Torgau+ (1540) is one of the most imposing of its class, with massive round and square towers showing externally, and court façades full of picturesque irregularities. In the great +Castle+ at +Dresden+ the plan is more symmetrical, and the Renaissance appears more distinctly in the details of the Georgenflügel (1530-50), though at that early date the classic orders were almost ignored. The portal of the Heldburg, however, built in 1562, is a composition quite in the contemporary French vein, with superposed orders and a crowning pediment over a massive basement. Another important series of castles or palaces are of more regular design, in which the feudal traditions tend to disappear. The majority belong to the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. They are built around large rectangular courts with arcades in two or three stories on one or more sides, but rarely surrounding it entirely. In these the segmental arch is more common than the semicircular, and springs usually from short and stumpy Ionic or Corinthian columns. The rooms and halls are arranged _en suite_, without corridors, and a large and lofty banquet hall forms the dominant feature of the series. The earliest of these regularly planned palaces are of Italian design. Chief among them is the +Residenz+ at +Landshut+ (1536-43), with a thoroughly Roman plan, by pupils of Giulio Romano, and exterior and court façades of great dignity treated with the orders. More German in its details, but equally interesting, is the +Fürstenhof+ at +Wismar+, in brick and terra-cotta, by _Valentino di Lira_ and _Van Aken_ (1553); while in the +Piastenschloss+ at Brieg (1547-72), by Italian architects, the treatment in parts suggests the richest works of the style of Francis I. In other castles the segmental arch and stumpy columns or piers show the German taste, as in the +Plassenburg+, by _Kaspar Vischer_ (1554-64), the castle at Plagnitz, and the +Old Castle+ at +Stuttgart+, all dating from about 1550-55. +Heidelberg Castle+, in spite of its mediæval aspect from the river and its irregular plan, ranks as the highest achievement of the German Renaissance in palace design. The most interesting parts among its various wings built at different dates--the earlier portions