page_title: Ludwigsburg Palace
section_title: Grounds and gardens
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwigsburg Palace / Grounds and gardens
caption_attribution_description: Schloss Ludwigsburg: Nordgarten mit altem Corps de Logis Kupferstich, koloriert Ludwigsburg, Städtisches Museum, Inv.Nr. 796
context_page_description: Ludwigsburg Palace, nicknamed the "Versailles of Swabia", is a 452-room palace complex of 18 buildings located in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Its total area, including the gardens, is 32 ha – the largest palatial estate in the country. The palace has four wings: the northern wing, the Alter Hauptbau, is the oldest and was used as a ducal residence; the east and west wings were used for court purposes and housing guests and courtiers; the southern wing, the Neuer Hauptbau, was built to house more court functions and was later used as a residence.
  Eberhard Louis, Duke of Württemberg, appointed Philipp Joseph Jenisch to direct the work and construction began in 1704. In 1707, Jenisch was replaced with Johann Friedrich Nette, who completed the majority of the palace and surrounding gardens. Nette died in 1714, and Donato Giuseppe Frisoni finished much of the palace facades. In the final year of construction, Eberhard Louis died and the Neue Hauptbau's interiors were left incomplete. Charles Eugene's court architect, Philippe de La Guêpière, completed and refurbished parts of the New Hauptbau in the Rococo style, especially the palace theatre.
context_section_description: The gardens were to be centered in the north with an Italian terraced garden and were largely completed when Eberhard Louis turned his attention to the south garden. There he laid out a large symmetrical French garden. Charles Eugene filled in the terraces in 1749 to replace them with a large broderie. He then reorganized and expanded the south garden over the next decade. Frederick I again reorganized the south garden in 1797 in a Neoclassical style and Mediterranean theme. He retained the original pathways, but added a canal and fountain to the garden's center. The south garden was divided into four equally sized lawns, with hillocks in their center topped with a large vase crafted by Antonio Isopi. Frederick also expanded the garden east to form an English landscape garden (Lower east) and demolished Charles Eugene's opera house to form a medieval-themed landscape garden (Upper east). Two additional gardens, for Frederick and Charlotte, were laid out adjacent to their palace suites. Also in the fantasy garden is the Emichsburg, a folly built from 1798 to 1802 and named after the fabled ancestor of the House of Württemberg, a knight of the House of Hohenstaufen. William I abandoned Ludwigsburg for Rosenstein Palace in Stuttgart and opened the south garden to the public in 1828. The canal was filled in and an orchard planted on the southern lawns, later used to grow potatoes.
  In 1947, Albert Schöchle, Director of the State Parks and Gardens Authority, was charged with maintaining the gardens. After visiting the 1951 Bundesgartenschau in Hanover, he decided to restore the gardens. Schöchle convinced Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Finance Karl Frank to help fund the venture in 1952 on the condition that the town of Ludwigsburg also assisted. Ludwigsburg's mayor, Elmar Doch, and the town council agreed to this stipulation. Frank approved the start of work on 23 March 1953, but it lasted late into the year. The restoration of the garden required the moving of 100,000 cubic meters (3,531,467 cu ft) of earth by bulldozers supplied and operated by American soldiers and the planting of tens of thousands of trees and hedges, 22,000 roses, and 400,000 other flowers. The Blooming Baroque (Blühendes Barock) gardens were opened on 23 April 1954 as a special horticultural show and attracted more than 500,000 visitors by the end of May, among them President Theodor Heuss. When the show closed in the fall of 1954, it had recouped all but 150,000 Deutsche Marks of the investment in the restoration of the gardens and became a permanent landmark. The opening of the Fairy-Tale Garden and its recreations of fairy-tales in 1959 was also an immediate success and increased revenue by 50% for that year. The Blooming Baroque gardens, covering an area of 32 hectares (79 acres), attract 520,000 to 550,000 visitors annually.
caption: A colored engraving depicting the Alter Hauptbau and the Emichsburg, dated to 1810
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