Heidecksburg

Schloss Heidecksburg stands above the old town of Rudolstadt in Thuringia, its grey stone rising sixty metres above the rooftops. The first castle on the site belonged to the Counts of Orlamünde in the 13th century, but after a siege in 1345 only fragments survived. By the late 14th century a new building occupied the space between today’s open-air stage and the middle of the palace square, leaving only the round tower now built into the stables. The counts of Schwarzburg enlarged the ruins into a Renaissance residence from 1571, drawing plans in the style of Vitruvius by the Netherland-trained architect Georg Robin, who directed the work until 1575. The palace burned in 1735, sparing parts of the south wing and the west wing’s ribbed vaulting. Reconstruction began two years later under Johann Christoph Knöffel, who planned the grand baroque west wing with its 40-metre tower. After Knöffel’s death in 1743 the work passed to Gottfried Heinrich Krohne, who finished the main block and created the Festsaal, a twelve-metre-high hall whose walls curve in waves and whose ceiling carries a fresco. South of the hall Krohne built the Red Rooms, and to the north the Green Room suite was completed by the 1770s, all richly decorated with stucco, paintings and carvings. A gallery links these rooms to two staircases, while the south wing contains living quarters that were repeatedly redecorated. Visitors today find the Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg and the state archive housed within the palace. The Festsaal, Green Room and Porzellangalerie open to guided tours, and the middle terrace and courtyard can be hired for events. The collection includes about eleven hundred paintings from the 16th to the 20th century, nearly five hundred of them portraits of the Schwarzburg family and allied rulers. Outside, the palace garden holds a Horen temple, artificial ruins and column stumps added around 1800, while the Schallhaus, once a garden pavilion, overlooks the lower terrace.