He now retired entirely into private life, and continued to play the Maecenas magnificently, frequently staying at his villa in Rome, the Villa Malta, and enjoying extraordinary vigour of mind and body up to the end of his days. His popularity, which had been shaken by the Montez affair, he soon recovered, especially among artists. To him Munich owes her finest art collections and most remarkable buildings. The monarch's artistic sense led him not only to adorn his house with a number of works of antique art, but also to study German medieval art, which he did to good effect. To him Munich owes the acquisition of the famous Rhenish collection of the Boisserée brothers. The king also worked with great zeal for the care of monuments, and the cathedrals of Spires and Cologne enjoyed his special care. He was also an unfailing supporter of contemporary painting, in so far as it responded to his romantic tendencies, and he gave a fresh impulse to the arts of working in metal and glass. As visible signs of his permanent services to art Munich possesses the Walhalla, the Glyptothek, the two Pinakotheken, the Odeon, the University, and many other magnificent buildings both sacred and profane. The rôle which the Bavarian capital now plays as the leading art centre of Germany would have been an impossibility without the splendid munificence of Louis I. He died on the 28th of February 1868 at Nice, and on the 9th of March was buried in Munich, amid demonstrations of great popular feeling. The chief part of Louis's records is contained in seven sealed chests in the archives of his family, and by the provisions of his will these were not to be opened till the year 1918. These records contain an extraordinarily large and valuable mass of historical material, including, as one item, 246 volumes of the king's diary.