Ludwigslust Palace

In 1724, Prince Christian Ludwig, the heir of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, decided to build a hunting lodge on this site, near a hamlet called Klenow.

On the urban side, the central block makes some compromises with the new neoclassical style in the flat planes of the façade, which simply occupies one flank of the square centered on it, without embracing the space in a cour d'honneur (illustration, below left) and in the severe Doric portico.

The Goldener Saal ("Gilded Hall") in the central block rises through two storeys, with a colossal order of Corinthian columns and massive decorations carried out in stucco and the innovative moldable and modelable paper-maché called Ludwigsluster Carton; it is used today for summertime concerts.

The opposite range was semi-private, with the Duke's drawing-room and bedchamber (hung with framed miniatures), a cabinet and a gallery with a porcelain chimneypiece.

[3] The trees laid out in the pattern and at the scale of Bernini's colonnades in Piazza San Pietro have disappeared, but there are the neoclassical stone bridge designed by Busch about 1780, with a cascade that falls across a lip so perfectly regular that it has the name Der Waltze (the "Roll"), a grotto built as a ruin, a Gothic chapel, two mausoleums[4] and a monument to a favourite horse.

[6] Water near the schloss was recast in more naturalistic manner and the surrounding woodland edges were varied, with clumps of trees as outliers, but the main axia Hofdamenallee centered on the palace, still stretches dead straight through the woods, and the narrow Great Canal, laid out at an angle to one side, still extends a kilometer and a half.