From castle to castle

Benrath Palace with its pleasure palace, hunting park, ponds and canals is considered Düsseldorf's most important architectural work of art. The palace in the south of Düsseldorf still looks exactly as it was planned and built in 1775 by master builder Nicolas de Pigage on behalf of Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz.

When planning the palace with its spacious gardens and avenues, each room inside the palace was assigned a garden space in the grounds. The English garden with its rare trees thus refers to the Elector's private room; the French garden with its water features and flowerbeds reflects the Electress's rooms.

Kitchen garden and forest park

A kitchen garden with espaliered fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers provided the palace kitchen with the necessary ingredients and can still be visited today. An extensive woodland park leads almost to the banks of the nearby Rhine. The network of avenues is laid out in a strict geometric pattern, with all paths meeting in a star shape in the roundel of a large lawn.

Museum of European Garden Art

Today, Benrath Palace is home to the Museum of European Garden Art. Many concerts and other events take place in the imposing palace park, especially in summer.

The Max Ernst Museum Brühl of the LVR exhibits paintings, collages, graphics, sculptures and assemblages, which provide an overview of the extensive oeuvre of the Dadaist and Surrealist. Special exhibitions present international artistic positions of the modern and contemporary periods that are in the tradition of a Dadaist or Surrealist mindset.

The painter, sculptor, draughtsman and poet Max Ernst is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. He uses indirect working methods, such as grattage (scratching off) or the process of abklatsch. Exploiting hallucinatory skills, the artist reinterprets objects and structures from his environment and repeatedly breaks them up through irony and humour.
 

The favourite residence of Cologne's Elector and Archbishop Clemens August von Wittelsbach, this rococo masterpiece is one of the first significant creations of this style in Germany. In 1725, the Westphalian master builder Johann Conrad Schlaun began to build the castle on the ruins of a medieval moated castle. Subsequently, Augustusburg Castle received its design under the Bavarian court architect François de Cuvilliés. Until its completion in 1768, renowned artists such as Balthasar Neumann worked here.

Since 1984, Augustusburg Palace - together with Falkenlust Palace and the Brühl Gardens - has been on the World Heritage List of Humanity.

The Baroque gardens were created by Dominique Girard from 1728 onwards on the basis of a French model, and Peter Joseph Lenné designed wooded areas away from the Baroque gardens from 1840 onwards in the style of an English landscape garden.

Today the palace is open to the public as a museum and is maintained in its historical style for this purpose. Located directly in Brühl's city centre, the nearest gastronomy is only a short walk away.

It is the work of the French garden artist Dominique Girard, who came to Brühl in 1727. The French garden complex with its large broderie parterre is today one of the most authentic 18th-century gardens in Europe.

The focal point of Girard's design is the avenue-lined Baroque parterre in front of the south side of the palace.

An avenue of linden trees established the connection to the Falkenlust hunting lodge. The ornamental garden was reconstructed by the Prussian Administration of State Palaces and Gardens from 1933 to 1935 according to Girard's original plan. A further revision followed in the 1980s. Today, the gardens of Augustusburg and Falkenlust are considered important examples of European garden art and are part of the "Road of Garden Art" initiative.

The weekly market, which takes place here regularly, is considered one of the most beautiful in Germany. Without the colourful hustle and bustle of the market, however, the mighty medieval church building is shown to its best advantage and can present itself in the right light undisturbed.

St Lamberti's is both a sight and an audio piece: every evening, except Tuesdays, the sound of Germany's only female town tower keeper can be heard every half hour in the tower room.

Nordkirchen Castle is one of the best-known and most popular destinations in Münsterland. It is an impressive example of great architecture. The imposing Nordkirchen Castle lies in the middle of extensive parkland in the immediate vicinity of the town of Nordkirchen. Beautiful walking paths lead through the castle park and end at Nordkirchen Castle.

Tour information

• The park is open at all times.
• Interior visits are only possible as part of a guided tour.

History information

In 1703, Prince-Bishop Friedrich Christian von Plettenberg laid the foundation stone for the present castle complex. Von Plettenberg wanted to create a perfect building and therefore commissioned the Münster court architect Gottfried Laurenz Pictorius to build the castle in the same year. Friedrich Christian von Plettenberg died only three years after the start of construction and his nephew, the later Imperial Count Ferdinand von Plettenberg, took over the supervision of the building work. These continued for another two decades until the baroque palace complex (the park with the side palaces and terraced gardens) was completed. In 1725, the most famous master builder of the Baroque period, Johann Conrad Schlaun, was commissioned to complete the construction work. He finally completed the imposing building in 1734. The lord of the castle himself went into debt with the building project, but he had created the largest moated castle and a park of European rank. It was Duke von Arenberg who made massive extensions to the palace at the beginning of the 20th century, including adding the side wings to the Oranienburg.