[1] Today, the cultural landscape of Dessau-Wörlitz encompasses an area of 142 km2 (55 sq mi) within the Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

[1] The Gardens had its origin in the 17th century, when the marriage of Leopold's great-grandfather Prince John George II of Anhalt-Dessau to the Dutch princess Henriette Catharina, daughter of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange (Dutch: Oranje), in 1659 brought a team of engineers and architects from the Low Countries under the supervision of architect Cornelis Ryckwaert to lay out the town, the palace and a Baroque garden in the former settlement of Nischwitz, which was renamed Oranienbaum in 1673.

In 1758, Prince Leopold III became the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, and five years later he and his friend, the architect Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff, embarked on a Grand Tour across Europe.

The tour (in particular the ancient architecture of Italy and the English landscape gardens), and the ideals of The Enlightenment they encountered abroad heavily influenced their artistic tendencies.

The central Wörlitzer Park lies adjacent to the small town of Wörlitz at an anabranch of the Elbe river, making it rich in water and diversity.

According to the ideals of Duke Leopold III the park would also serve as an educational institution in architecture, gardening and agriculture, therefore large parts were open to the public from the beginning.

At the eastern rim of the palace's garden stands the Wörlitz Synagogue built in 1790 as a rotunda modeled after the ancient "Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy.

When Leopold III went on a grand tour of Europe in the 1760s, he was captivated by a trip to Naples in which he saw a smouldering Mount Vesuvius and would have heard about the newly-discovered town of Pompeii.

[4] Only contemporary accounts detail what the 18th-century artificial eruption would have been like, but the practice still takes place today, complete with modern effects, after the island was restored to its past glory.

However, in 1780 Duke Leopold III had the palace and the park rebuilt in a Chinese style, according to the theories of Sir William Chambers, with several arch bridges, a tea house and a pagoda.

[3] Today the Georgium hosts the Anhalt collection of art,[3] including works by Albrecht Dürer - especially an old master print of his Melencolia I - and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The ensemble includes an orangery and an art collection of Flemish Baroque painting, stemming from Duke John George's II union with the House of Orange-Nassau, that features works by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.