Veitshöchheim Palace: A Baroque Summer Residence and Rococo Garden in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page17 sections
History
Veitshöchheim Palace is a Baroque summer residence in Veitshöchheim, Germany, built for the prince-bishops of Würzburg between 1680 and 1682. The complex is principally known for the surrounding Hofgarten, one of the few surviving French-style Rococo gardens in Germany. The prince-bishops were Catholic bishops who also governed territory in the Holy Roman Empire, so the palace served both an ecclesiastical ruling court and its owners’ leisure activities.
Hunting Lodge and Princely Garden
Two small castles with pheasant enclosures, and probably deer enclosures, stood at Veitshöchheim by the sixteenth century. In 1681, Prince-Bishop Peter Philipp von Dernbach acquired additional land to enlarge the princely hunting garden. The core of the present palace was built soon afterward. Its ground-floor hall, with five arcades, provided shelter after hunting. The building was later extended by two window bays and given a representative upper floor.
Between 1702 and 1703, Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Greiffenclau transformed the pheasantry into a pleasure garden. The earlier Dernbach castle was refurbished as a summer residence, a formal parterre was laid out, and the southern part of the grounds was arranged as an orchard or bosquet, a designed grove or enclosed area of trees and shrubs. This garden included the Great Lake.
Eighteenth-Century Transformation
In 1748 and 1749, the older moated castles were demolished and replaced by a cavalier building and other agricultural structures. The deteriorated garden was restored according to the original plan of 1702 by Carl Philipp von Greiffenclau. After the Seven Years’ War, a major European conflict fought from 1756 to 1763, Prince-Bishop Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim ordered another redesign. From 1763, the garden received fountains, additional water features, and approximately 300 sandstone sculptures.
In 1753, Balthasar Neumann gave the palace its present appearance. He added side pavilions, a distinctive sweeping roof, and a grand interior staircase to the earlier building. These changes established the form of the two-storey Baroque palace that survives today.
From Würzburg Rule to the Bavarian State
Between 1806 and 1814, the palace was the summer residence of Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Elector and Grand Duke of Würzburg. Several rooms were then furnished in the Empire style, the early nineteenth-century classical style associated with the Napoleonic period and its courts.
When the Grand Duchy of Würzburg was dissolved in 1814, the property passed to the Bavarian kings. They used the palace only rarely, although it became a popular day-trip destination for residents of Würzburg. During the nineteenth-century construction of the Ludwigs-West Railway, engineers proposed placing the line along the park’s central avenue. King Ludwig I vetoed the plan and ordered the railway around the Hofgarten, avoiding the destruction of the garden.
After the First World War, in 1918, the palace and garden passed to the Free State of Bavaria. The palace opened as a museum in 1932. Extensive restoration took place between 2001 and 2005. From around 1990, the Bavarian Palace Administration also restored the historic kitchen garden as a “green archive” of older fruit, vegetable, herb, and medicinal-plant varieties.
Remains
The Palace Building and Interiors
Exterior and ceremonial spaces
The surviving palace is a two-storey Baroque building retaining four projecting bays, or sections that extend outward from the main wall. Its side pavilions, sweeping roof, and grand staircase date from the alterations of 1753. A balustrade decorated with vases and groups of putti, childlike figures used in European decorative art, surrounds the building. All the flooring dates from the Baroque period.
Baroque rooms
The upper floor contains surviving Baroque furnishings in a dining room with gaming tables, a billiard room, a study, a sitting room, and a bedroom with a private lavatory furnished at a later date. Original stucco by Antonio Giuseppe Bossi remains in the rooms. Most of the silk wall coverings were reconstructed in Lyon from original patterns, while the sitting room retains its original wall covering made with the rare ikat technique, in which yarns are resist-dyed before weaving.
Palace chapel
A chapel occupies part of the stairwell. Its stucco altar, made by Antonio Bossi, is decorated with elaborate gradations of color, and a convertible prayer chair survives. The original embossed goatskin wallpaper with gold ornament was removed and stored elsewhere to protect it from moisture.
Kitchen and private circulation
A small kitchen was used to prepare or arrange food. Passages from the bedrooms on both sides lead to valet rooms and then to small exterior balconies. These balconies run around the living quarters before returning to the staircase, linking the private rooms with the service areas.
Empire-style apartments
Five Empire-style rooms are displayed on the upper floor with their original furnishings. They comprise an antechamber with an adjoining study, a sitting room with an unusual tiered flower stand, a bedroom, and a tower room. Their decoration includes detailed botanical wallpaper, furniture made from cherry, plum, and yew wood, and alabaster oil lamps. The wallpaper was produced with Schweinfurt green, an arsenic-containing pigment used to intensify color and improve durability. The Sattler company of Schonungen participated in its production.
The Hofgarten
Formal layout and water features
The Hofgarten covers approximately 12.5 hectares. Its surviving layout includes a formal parterre, the Great Lake, hedge salons, pergolas or arbored walks, pavilions, rondels, circular or rounded garden features, fountains, numerous water features, and artificial ruins. Together these elements form the physical setting of the palace and preserve the garden design developed through the eighteenth-century transformations.
Sculpture and the Parnassus fountain
Approximately 300 sandstone sculptures stand throughout the garden. Court sculptors Johann Wolfgang van der Auvera, Ferdinand Tietz, and Johann Peter Wagner created figures of mythological beings, animals, angels, and characters associated with the fables of Jean de La Fontaine. A major fountain represents Mount Parnassus, which Greek mythology associated with Apollo and the Muses. Pegasus, the winged horse traditionally connected with the Muses and poetic inspiration, stands at its centre, with a water jet issuing from the figure’s mouth.
Chinese-style pavilions and grotto
Three Chinese-style pavilions reflect the eighteenth-century fashion for pagoda forms. One is a grotto house, a sgraffito-decorated pavilion built over an artificial grotto with a fountain. Sgraffito is made by scratching through one layer of plaster or coating to reveal another beneath.
The grotto contains shell and stone decoration. Two dragons are made from shells, lizards from small stones, and a tiger from snail shells. Johann Philipp Geigel and Materno Bossi designed the grotto complex, which is comparable to the grotto at the Boboli Gardens of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
Historic kitchen garden
The restored kitchen garden preserves older varieties of vegetables and salads, spices, medicinal herbs, and rare fruits. Recorded plants include artichokes, aubergines, melons, poppies, winter purslane, and hyssop. Fruit varieties include Goldparmäne, Gewürzluiken, Champagnerrenette, and Gelber Bellefleur.
Court gardener Johann Prokop Mayer introduced fruit trees with “kettle crowns,” shaped crowns intended to improve nutrient absorption and increase exposure to sunlight. Heat-loving peaches, quinces, and pears were trained in different forms on espalier fences, with the trees grown flat against walls or supporting frameworks.
Railway Buildings
Veitshöchheim railway station received a representative nineteenth-century reception building with a king’s pavilion aligned with the palace. A covered walkway connects the two buildings. The former reception building is now used as the municipal library.
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