Schloss Belvedere

The Baroque palace Schloss Belvedere on the outskirts of Weimar, is a pleasure-house (Lustschloss) built for house-parties, built in 1724–1732 to designs of Johann August Richter and Gottfried Heinrich Krohne for Ernst August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. The corps de logis is flanked by symmetrical pavilions. Today it houses part of the art collections of Weimar, with porcelains and faience, furniture and paintings of the eighteenth century. As the summer residence, its gardens, laid out in the French style in 1728–1748, were an essential amenity. A wing of the Orangery in the Schlosspark contains a collection of historical carriages.

After 1811, much of the outer gardens was altered to conform to the English landscape garden style, as an Englischer Garten, for Grand Duke Carl Friedrich, who died at Belvedere in 1853. The enriched collection of exotic plants was published as Hortus Belvedereanus in 1820.

Because of its testimony to the cultural influence of Weimar during the height of Weimar Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Schloss Belvedere was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998 as part of the Classical Weimar site.

Text adapted from “Schloss Belvedere, Weimar” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Schloss Belvedere ranks #1,846 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #138 of the 492 mapped in Germany. Founded 1724, it is older than 20% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 525 atlas entries founded in the 18th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 2,442 times in the last 60 days, more than 71% of the atlas. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. It is one of the 22 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Thuringia. See how Germany compares in the castle statistics.

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