Schwetzingen Palace

The Palatine electors used Schwetzingen as a summer residence, and from 1753 laid out a garden that combines a formal French circle near the palace with an English landscape park beyond, filled with buildings: a bath house, a Temple of Apollo, an artificial Roman water castle built as a ruin from the start, and a mosque with minarets built between 1779 and 1791 as a garden folly rather than for worship, the largest such building in a European garden. The End of the World is a trick perspective, a painted view seen through a frame that appears to open onto an infinite landscape.

History

Schwetzingen is first mentioned in 1350 as a fort, an ordinary medieval water castle, which came to Elector Louis III in 1427, served as a hunting lodge and was destroyed towards the end of the Thirty Years' War; in August 1656 Elector Charles I Louis ordered the ruins cleared and had it rebuilt for his wife Marie Luise von Degenfeld. Elector John William had it rebuilt and extended with two wings from 1697 by Count Matteo Alberti and Johann Adam Breunig, still as a hunting lodge, and under Charles IV Theodore, 1742-1799, it became the summer palace to which the court moved from Mannheim each warm season, decorated by the court's artists, among them Alessandro Galli da Bibiena and Peter Anton von Verschaffelt (Wikipedia, Schwetzingen Palace).

What to look for

• The garden mosque - the largest such folly in any European garden.
• The End of the World - a painted perspective faking an endless view.
• The false ruin - a Roman water castle built already ruined.
• The two garden styles - a French circle giving way to an English park.

When to go

April to October for the gardens; asparagus season in spring is a local event and the town is known for it. The palace interior is by guided tour only.

Practical notes

The palace interior is guided-only with set times. The gardens are large and take hours. Winter closes several garden buildings.

Nearby

Heidelberg lies east; Mannheim is north.

Key facts