château Antoinettenruh

A small pleasure palace once stood at the south-west edge of Lechlumer Holz, between Wolfenbüttel and Braunschweig. Built around 1733 for Antoinette Amalie, daughter of the Duke of Braunschweig, it served later as a widow’s home for Philippine Charlotte. The architect Hermann Korb is credited with its design. The building was pulled down in 1832, leaving only a few outbuildings and the garden. The main block was two storeys high with a central section framed by long one-and-a-half-storey wings. A broken roof rose above a curved gable with a clock and thirteen dormer windows. Each wing held a garden hall and four rooms, while the garden stretched toward Wolfenbüttel and the Harz foothills. A round temple was intended for Antoinette Amalie’s tomb, though she was buried elsewhere. The garden was laid out with terraces and paths through beech woods. Before the palace, a smaller lodge stood on the site as early as 1688. A greenhouse was added between 1717 and 1720, decorated with sculptures by Heinrich Eversmann. Philippine Charlotte gave summer concerts here, and Jérôme Bonaparte stopped briefly in 1807. Only the garden and a few outbuildings survive today.