Schloss Rastatt is a baroque palace built between 1700 and 1707 by the Italian architect Domenico Egidio Rossi. The palace and garden were built to Margrave Louis William of Baden. During the Palatine war of succession the residence of Margrave Louis William of Baden-Baden had been burnt by French troops. A rebuild of the destroyed castle would not have suited the representative needs of the court of Baden-Baden. Since he also needed a home for his wife Sibylle Auguste of Saxe-Lauenburg, whom he had married in 1690, he had a new residence built in place of the former hunting lodge.
During this operation the 1697 hunting lodge was demolished to leave space for the new castle. The village of Rastatt was promoted to city status in 1700 and the Margrave moved here with his court. The residence in Rastatt is the oldest Baroque residence in the German Upper-Rhine area. It was built according to the example of the French Palace of Versailles. During the 19th century the castle was used as headquarters.
Inside the palace a large staircase with stucco decorations give way to the Beletage. The biggest and most decorated hall is the Ahnensaal. It is decorated with numerous frescoes and shows paintings of ancestors and of captured Ottoman soldiers.
The castle was not damaged during World War II. Today the castle is home of two museums, the military history museum and memorial site for the German liberation movement.
References:Ehrenbreitstein Fortress was built as the backbone of the regional fortification system, Festung Koblenz, by Prussia between 1817 and 1832 and guarded the middle Rhine region, an area that had been invaded by French troops repeatedly before. The fortress was never attacked.
Early fortifications at the site can be dated back to about 1000 BC. At about AD 1000 Ehrenbert erected a castle. The Archbishops of Trier expanded it with a supporting castle Burg Helferstein and guarded the Holy Tunic in it from 1657 to 1794. Successive Archbishops used the castle's strategic importance to barter between contending powers; thus in 1672 at the outset of war between France and Germany the Archbishop refused requests both from the envoys of Louis XIV and from Brandenburg's Ambassador, Christoph Caspar von Blumenthal, to permit the passage of troops across the Rhine.