In the winter had a nice trip to Germany to visit Wilhelmshohe Hill Park which sits on one end of the city of Kassel, there stands what appears to be a medieval castle, It is always very soothing to our eyes to see the fascinating structures built in the ancient times. The Lowenburg or "Lion's Castle" was ordered to be built by the Landgrave Wilhelm IX from Hessen Kassel (1743 -1821) the Walt Disney of his era, over a period of eight years between 1793 and 1801 as a romantic ruin.
It was carefully designed by his royal court building inspector Heinrich Christoph Jussow (1754 - 1825) who had been trained as an architect and construction project manager in France, Italy, and England, and who had gone to England specifically to study romantic English ruins and draw up a plan for the Landgrave's garden folly.
What the Landgrave did here was the eighteenth century equivalent of Disney World Tokyo. It is a central element of the Wilhlemshohe castle park which, starting in 1785, the Landgrave transformed into a landscaped garden modeled on the English pattern, and filled with themed areas - fake Roman aqua ducts, fake English Castle Ruins, fake Grecian temples, and even a fake Chinese Village.
Since 1945 the reception rooms in the keep tower and the passageway building no longer exists, or if so, only in rough form. This is why one now accesses the royal rooms in the manor house through the servants entry way.
On the ground floor of the Landgrave's living quarters there is a guest apartment with dressing room, bedroom, and a toilet room. Via the servants' stairway one arrives at the Landgrave's apartment on the first floor. Through a door in the antechamber one enters the dressing room. Today it houses an impressive gold leather tapestry which belongs to the gallery in the northern part of the passageway building.
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