Promenadenring (Leipzig)
The Promenadenring Leipzig (Ring of promenades) is the oldest municipal landscape park in Germany[1] and one of the most important garden and cultural monuments in the city.
The term is also used as a synonym for Leipzig's inner city ring road, a traffic facility that is connected to the green spaces of the Promenadenring.
"The outer end of the promenade, which was planted with numerous rare trees and had plenty of seating, formed a wide avenue for pedestrians, which in turn was bordered by a road.
[3] The Lower Park (today also called Müller-Park) is located in the northeast of the Promenadenring in front of the main train station, stretched out between Richard-Wagner-Straße and Willy-Brandt-Platz.
After the destruction of the World War II, it took until 1981 for the Gewandhaus to be built on the square now named after Karl Marx again received a complete architectural enclosure.
The outer bailey in the area between the town gates Grimmaisches Tor and Peterstor, which had previously been used as a plant nursery, was filled up in 1857 on the initiative of Mayor Otto Koch and completely redesigned according to a design by Peter Joseph Lenné.
On the south-west corner of the ring, the promenade was redesigned by the city's garden director, Hampel, after the new building and the opening of the new town hall at the beginning of the 20th century.
On the west side of the ring is the oldest part of the Promenadenring, which began here before the Seven Years' War with an avenue of lime trees and the Muhmenplatz near St. Thomas church.
In the run-up to the Bach Year of 2000, this design was restored and a copy of the Mendelssohn memorial that had been dismantled in front of the Old Gewandhaus in 1936 was erected.
Further north, in the area of the upper Dittrichring, the promenades have a forest-like appearance in a relatively small space.
Around the Märchenbrunnen (fairy tale fountain) created in 1906 with motifs from "Hansel and Gretel", whose bronze figures, which were melted down during WW II for armament purposes, were modeled in 1963, there is a corresponding scenery with planted forest shrubs and ferns.
On 22 May 2013, on the occasion of the composer's 200th birthday, a modern designed Wagner memorial by the artist Stephan Balkenhol was opened here.
Also worth mentioning is the monument erected in 1851 for the Leipzig doctor and lecturer Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (1753-1843).
The Richard-Wagner-Straße in front of the Höfe am Brühl hardly gives any indication that a green ring of promenades once ran from this point to the Lower Park described above.
