Poppelsdorf Palace

Bonn, Germany

The design of a new structure to replace the old ruined castle of Poppelsdorf commenced in 1715 at the request of the owner, Joseph Clemens, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, who engaged the French architect Robert de Cotte. Clemens wanted a maison de plaisance that would be near his remodeled Bonn Palace one-half mile to the north. There was to be a canal between the two, following the example of the Palace of Versailles and the Trianon de Marbre.

Work came to a halt after Clemens' death in 1723, but his nephew and heir, Archbishop of Cologne Clemens August, undertook a second campaign of construction in 1745–1746.

Under the Prussian rule, in 1818 the Palace and the nearby Park became part of the University of Bonn. In the same year the Park was converted to the Botanical Garden of Bonn, which today contains about 0.5 hectares of greenhouse area with eleven greenhouses and about 8.000 different plants.

In 1944 the Palace was heavily damaged by an Allied air attack. It has been rebuilt in a much simpler appearance from 1955 on.

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Address

Clemens-August-Weg, Bonn, Germany
See all sites in Bonn

Details

Founded: 1715-1746
Category: Palaces, manors and town halls in Germany
Historical period: Thirty Years War & Rise of Prussia (Germany)

More Information

www.bonn-region.de
en.wikipedia.org

Rating

4.4/5 (based on Google user reviews)

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St. Maria im Kapitol (25,1 km)

User Reviews

Lark Sisterman (2 years ago)
Looks nice from the outside, unfortunately it was closed when we went there.
MD SABBIR-BIN HOSSAIN (2 years ago)
Nice place for spend time with friends and family and also for running.
MrRoelWouters (2 years ago)
The Poppelsdorf Palace is a beautiful palace that is mostly surrounded by beautiful gardens. You can visit the inner courtyard free of charge. Inside you can find the Mineralogical-Petrological Museum and the Institute for Zoology. Outside the gardens have been turned into botanical gardens for which you have to pay to visit them.
Kathy Newman (2 years ago)
Nice palace and surrounding gardens, nice for a stroll and picnic
Catherine Widmann (3 years ago)
200 year old Mineralogical Museum great for adults and kids! Hands-on exhibits and examples of how minerals are used in our daily lives were well received. Thank you! Next year 2018 look out for events celebrating its 200 year anniversary. The interiors are beautiful and the collection impressive.
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Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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