Schwetzingen Palace

It is situated in Schwetzingen, roughly equidistant from the electors' seats at Heidelberg and Mannheim, and is most notable for its spacious and ornate gardens.

During a visit in August 1656, he had already ordered the inhabitants of Schwetzingen to clean away all the ruins, so that stone, wood, and old ironwork from the debris could be put to use by his subjects.

John William had it rebuilt under the direction of Count Matteo Alberti, who also oversaw the construction of Bensberg Castle, and the Heidelberg architect Johann Adam Breunig, and had it extended with two wings.

The simplicity of the residence of the Elector and his wife was, along with the greater informality of the court at Schwetzingen, an expression of a supposedly simpler, untroubled "love of the land."

Subsequently, the Lorrainian Nicolas de Pigage was manager of the gardens and fountains, as well as the most significant architect in this period of the Palace's history.

As the new, greatly expanded gardens of Charles Theodore began to take shape, plans were commissioned from de Pigage, for a new palace that would have been of a scale on par with its surroundings.

Although the palace ceased to be used after Elector Charles IV Theodore shifted his residence from Mannheim to Munich in 1778, the garden was subsequently reworked.

The vehicle, now located at Nymphenberg Palace was an inspiration to Heidelberg student Karl Drais in his invention of the velocipede (a precursor of the bicycle).

These rooms may not have the supreme splendour found elsewhere in German princely dwellings, but they do convey a particularly vivid image of the court's everyday life.

The rooms of the residence of the countess Louise Caroline of Hochberg on the second floor, which were remodelled after 1803, are particularly significant because of the survival of the hand-printed wallpaper made by Zuber & Cie in 1804.

The main building was too small to accommodate the reception rooms required for court social events (feasts, games, concerts, and balls).

Thus, two large halls and a theater were instead incorporated into two symmetrical curved outbuildings (the Zirkelbauten) on the garden side, which had initially been intended to serve only as orangeries.

The Zirkelbauten are single-story stone structures, with high windows that double as doors, providing direct access to the garden.

Originally built in 1753, to the plans of Nicolas de Pigage (1723–1796) and in a very short time, it could be considered a pure rococo creation.

As a result, the theatre can, at least visually, also be considered a combination of the customary "French" and "Italian" layouts, even if the adjustment was, in this case, made mostly for practical reasons.

The numerous princely estates in the Holy Roman Empire were quick to pick up the change, often remodelling older gardens according to the new taste.

The Schwetzingen garden perhaps uniquely reflects this fundamental change in attitude, as its creators actually sought to reconcile the two conflicting styles.

The first plan, devised by the gardener Petrie of Zweibrücken, introduced one highly unusual motif, namely laying out the main parterre as a full circle.

It appears to have relied heavily on French theorist Dezallier d'Argenville's influential textbook Théorie et practique du jardinage.

However, not all of them were carried out, and as time progressed, the prince's (and possibly also the architect's) reluctance to make a full switch towards the "English" style provoked critical scorn (most notably from the garden-design theorist Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld[2]).

The outstanding architectural quality of these small, yet elaborate, buildings was universally acknowledged (Hirschfeld, in fact, objected mostly to their number – he would have preferred fewer of them).

On the newer, more fully developed landscaped portions, Pigage collaborated closely with the up-and-coming garden designer Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell.

The sculpture throughout the garden is of varied quality, including some notable works by Gabriël Grupello and Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, among others.

A sculpture of Pan sitting atop a cliff and playing his flute, by the Mannheim sculptor, Peter Simon Lamine, was very highly regarded in its time.[when?]

Most of it is the work of then-celebrated French artist Barthélemy Guibal and had previously adorned the Lunéville palace of the deposed Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński.

The lake and all the other water features have been supplied from two waterworks, since the time of Pigage, which use the Leimbach river to drive waterwheels that power a set of pumps.

The pumps are located at the north wing of the palace ("upper waterwork" with an elevated tank in the modern ministry of finance building).

A second pump and elevated tank, which ensures steady water pressure, was hidden at the end of the park behind the aqueduct ("lower waterwork").

The building programme makes philosophical and architectural references to Classical Antiquity and, in the case of the mosque-complex, to Islam and "oriental wisdom".

[7] Practically, the temple functions as a gloriette, with the upper level providing a clear line of sight over the lake and towards the mosque.