Schloss Belvedere

Schloss Belvedere stands on the edge of Weimar in Thüringen. The Baroque palace was built between 1724 and 1732 as a pleasure-house for house-parties by Ernst August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar. Johann August Richter and Gottfried Heinrich Krohne designed the building, which has a central corps de logis flanked by symmetrical pavilions. Today it holds part of Weimar’s art collections, including porcelains, faience, furniture and paintings from the eighteenth century. The gardens were laid out in the French style between 1728 and 1748 as an essential amenity for summer residence. A wing of the Orangery in the Schlosspark contains a collection of historical carriages. The site is recognised for its role during the height of Weimar Classicism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. After 1811, much of the outer gardens was reshaped into an English landscape garden for Grand Duke Carl Friedrich, who died at Belvedere in 1853. The enriched collection of exotic plants was published as Hortus Belvedereanus in 1820. Because of its cultural influence, Schloss Belvedere was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998 as part of the Classical Weimar site. Visitors find the palace’s symmetrical pavilions and central corps de logis arranged around formal gardens. The French-style gardens still show the original layout from the 1730s. The Orangery wing displays carriages that once belonged to the ducal household. Beyond the formal gardens, the English landscape garden offers winding paths through mature trees and lawns. The site also includes glasshouses that once housed the exotic plants listed in Hortus Belvedereanus.