Schloss Benrath is a Baroque-style maison de plaisance (pleasure palace) in Benrath, which is now a borough of Düsseldorf. It was erected for the Elector Palatine Charles Theodor and his wife, Countess Palatine Elisabeth Auguste of Sulzbach, by his garden and building director Nicolas de Pigage. Construction began in 1755 and was completed in 1770. The ensemble at Benrath has been proposed for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The main building, the central corps de logis, for the Elector Palatine and his wife is flanked by two arched symmetrical wings, the maisons de cavalière, which originally housed the servants. They partially surround a circular pond, the Schlossweiher (palace pond), in the north. On the southside lies a long rectangular pond, the Spiegelweiher (mirror pond). From the predescant castle, which stood formerly in the mid of the long rectangular pond on the southside of the palace, is conserved only one of the servant wings, the so-called Alte Orangerie (Old Orangery).
The main building is a museum with guided tours. Sometimes music concerts are also performed. The two wings house two museums since 2002: the Museum for European Garden Art in the east wing and the Museum of Natural History in the west wing.
The palace is surrounded by a baroque square hunting park with two crossing diagonal alleys and a circular alley.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.