Söder manor

Schloss Söder is a Baroque water castle in the village of Söder, part of the Holle municipality in the Hildesheim district. It stands on a former farm surrounded by a moat on three sides, with a central square building flanked by two equal wings and corner pavilions. The symmetrical façade features a seven-window middle section and Mansard roofs on the pavilions, while the main roof carries a small bell tower. The site is worth visiting for its rare art collection assembled by Friedrich Moritz von Brabeck in the late 18th century. His gallery held about 400 works, including pieces by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Titian and Rembrandt, valued at half a million thalers. The surrounding park, begun in 1791, follows English landscape principles with a two-kilometre lime-tree avenue leading to the Turmberg. Inside the courtyard, visitors see the gravel forecourt and moat, while the park contains a large orangery built in 1905 and a veteran oak with a trunk circumference of nearly seven metres. The garden also features the Freundschaftstempel, a small pavilion designed by Erdmannsdorff, which once served as a teahouse. Beyond the moat, the landscape of fields and low hills completes the designed view from the house.