Düsseldorf Castle
[1] From 1845 onwards, the former residential palace, which at that time had already housed the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf for several decades, was developed under Friedrich Wilhelm IV into the Parliament of the Rhine Province Provincial Diet.
In the night of 19 to 20 March 1872, the palace, for centuries the landmark of the residential city of Düsseldorf as well as a centre in the life and urban fabric of the old town, was a prey to the flames.
The origins of the castle date back to the time when Adolf VIII of Berg, together with John I, Duke of Brabant and the counts of Jülich and Eberhard finally ended the rule of the Cologne Archbishop in the Battle of Worringen in 1288.
"Item in demselven jair op den 23 ten dach December brande die alde Borch to Dusseldorp gans aff",[7] describes the Duisburger Chronik the fire of the Alte Burg in Düsseldorf.
But it was not until William appointed the Renaissance master builder Alessandro Pasqualini from Bologna to Düsseldorf in 1549 that building activity gained momentum.
In the north-eastern corner of the castle courtyard Pasqualini also added a three-storey loggia, which in its "modern Renaissance forms stands out very much from the ancient half-timbered gallery to the left of the rectangular entrepreneure".
On the occasion of his marriage to Jakobea of Baden in 1585, Frans Hogenberg created various copperplate engravings depicting the architecture of the residential palace: In 1613, the Palatinate-Neuburg hereditary prince Wolfgang Wilhelm and the Brandenburg elector Johann Sigismund met in Düsseldorf Schloss to negotiate the War of the Jülich Succession.
[3] The staircase tower on the Rhine-side wing, as well as the loggia and [half-timbered] galleries, had to give way to arcades and a strictly structured three-line window front".
[7] The renovation work was also directed at the interior; Jan Wellem made use of Italian architects, in particular Domenico Martinelli, who had initially designed a large rectangular four-wing complex with symmetrical Baroque façades and sequences of rooms, incorporating foundation walls from the old palace.
Elector Jan Wellem and his wife Anna Maria Luisa resided in Düsseldorf, often moving to Benrath Palace in the summer and to Bensberg Castle for hunting.
After the death of Jan Wellem, the main residence of the Elector was transferred to Heidelberg in 1718 and to Mannheim in 1720 under his successor Karl Philipp, so that the palace and city of Düsseldorf lost their prominent position again.
The building complex was crowned with steep, heavy French roofs, the designs supplied by the court architect Johann Caspar Nosthofen.
As a result, a large fire broke out on the night of 7 October, in which the Residenzschloss, the church and convent of the Celestines in Ratinger Straße, the electoral stables on Mühlenstraße, and many burghers' houses burned out and down.
[14] In the Beautification Decree of 17 December 1811, published in the Law Bulletin of the Grand Duchy of Berg, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had visited Düsseldorf the previous month, provided under Art.
[15] The remaining parts of the palace were to be used for the Provincial Landtag of the Rhenish Stände and for the Kunstakademie according to plans by the Academy of Arts professor Rudolf Wiegmann and the Royal Prussian court architect Friedrich August Stüler[16] be rebuilt again or structurally supplemented in the style of the neo-Renaissance.
The Provinzial-Gewerbe-Ausstellung für Rheinland und Westphalen [de] was held in the completed 24 halls of the palace from 15 July to 1 October 1852, even before the Provincial Diet moved in.
[20] This was opposed by other professors who doubted the suitability of the palace as an academy building and demanded better premises, which they finally obtained with the Neubau der Kunstakademie am Sicherheitshafen in 1879.
