Schwetzingen Palace Garden

The former summer residence of the Electors of the Palatinate, the setting for glittering courtly festivities and pleasures during the reign of Carl Theodor (1742-1799), still conveys a charming impression of courtly life in the 18th century. During the reign of the Grand Dukes of Baden in the 19th century, the complex experienced a second high point. During this time, elegant apartments were built in the classicist style. The famous Schwetzingen Palace Gardens are a world-class cultural monument which uniquely combines the central composition as the basic scheme of the Baroque garden complex with the "natural" landscape of the English garden and allows visitors to experience it. The numerous buildings and special features, such as the rococo theatre, the bathhouse, the mosque, the water features and the artificial ruins, as well as the geometrically precisely formed avenues and the wide expanses of meadow, allow visitors to immerse themselves in another world again and again as they walk through the garden. Schwetzingen Palace and Palace Gardens are, as a total work of art in the sense of the Baroque, a cultural monument of world rank.

The core of today's Schwetzingen Palace is a medieval moated castle which came into the possession of the Palatine Counts of the Rhine in 1427. Elector Johann Wilhelm had the complex expanded into a Baroque three-winged complex between 1698 and 1717 after it had been destroyed in the war. Finally, in 1720, Elector Carl Philipp moved the main residence of the Elector Palatinate from Heidelberg to Mannheim. Schwetzingen is extended as a hunting and summer residence. Under the electoral couple Carl Theodor (1724-1799; reigned from 1742) and Elisabeth Auguste (1721-1794) Schwetzingen experiences its Golden Age. Until his move to Munich in 1778, the court regularly stays in Schwetzingen for several months in the summer.

Next to Mannheim, Schwetzingen is considered the Palatine "court of the Muses" and is a field of experimentation for artists and scientists alike. Schwetzingen attained European significance through its promotion of music and theatre. Voltaire (1753), Leopold Mozart and his children Wolfgang and Nannerl (1763) as well as Casanova (1767) succumb to its attraction.
Schwetzingen is expanded according to plan and is granted market rights in 1759 - an indication of its increasing importance as a summer residence. From 1749 the Lorraine architect Nicolas de Pigage (1723-1796) is responsible for the extension of the palace grounds and builds his first masterpiece in the palace gardens, the Rococo Theatre. In 1761 he was also appointed director of horticulture.

In 1753 the garden architect Johann Ludwig Petri (1714-1794) delivered the execution plan for the circular garden parterre, framed by the circle buildings and the arcades and later with the Arion fountain in the middle. The planned rich decoration of the palace garden is continued in 1761 with the new orangery, and in the following year the Apollo Temple and Natural Theatre are built.
In 1768, Pigage begins construction of the bathhouse, located off to the side in the garden. This retreat for the Elector demonstrates - at great expense - "modesty" and thus refers to Carl Theodor's Enlightenment mindset. From 1771, a hydroelectric pumping station with high storage, the so-called Upper Waterworks, supplies the eastern part of the garden and the water features, and in 1774 the Lower Waterworks is added.

In 1776 Pigage travels to England and meets Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750-1823), who had been commissioned by Carl Theodor to study the English landscape gardens for several years. Already in the following year, the two laid out the "Arborium Theodoricum" ("Meadow Valley") in Schwetzingen, the first landscape garden in southern Germany. In 1778 Elector Carl Theodor moved to Munich and took most of the artists with him. Pigage and Sckell remain in Schwetzingen to complete and maintain the gardens. Highlights include the Garden Mosque, largely completed in 1795, and the Temple of Mercury, built on an artificial hill between 1784 and 1792.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Electoral Palatinate on the right bank of the Rhine fell to the House of Baden. Under the now responsible garden director Johann Michael Zeyher (1770-1843), the Arboretum, an educational tree garden, is created. The large basin in the west of the garden is redesigned in the spirit of the English landscape garden and takes the form of a natural lake (1823-1824).

The garden has been open to the public since 1787 and is first discussed in detail in Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's "Theorie der Gartenkunst" (Leipzig 1779-1785).In 1809, the first garden guide written by Zeyher is published. Many writers discuss the garden in their works, such as Friedrich Schiller, Joseph von Eichendorff, Ivan Turgeniev and Ernst Bloch. Other, innumerable garden guides followed, also in English and French, demonstrating the great interest in Schwetzingen as a travel destination throughout the 19th century.

Schwetzingen survived both the massive social upheavals during the period of industrialization and the two great world wars without major damage. In the second half of the 20th century, extensive conservation measures begin in the garden and palace. The buildings are repaired, the garden sculptures are replaced by copies for reasons of conservation and the originals are exhibited in the southern circle as a lapidarium, the palace is renovated and the interiors are reconstructed. The garden was carefully restored from 1970 onwards. Since 1952, the "Schwetzingen Festival" has taken up the tradition of the summer residence as a court of the muses for two months each year.