Wilhelmsthal Palace Park

Building works for the hunting lodge and summer residence of the Dukes of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach started in 1698 in a choice location at the edge of Thuringia Forest. Its picturesque landscape park was turned into a piece of art in the 1850s by Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, in cooperation with court gardener Hermann Jäger. In subsequent decades, the horticultural masterpiece was carefully groomed, but after 1941 it was increasingly neglected. When the “Thuringian Castle and Garden Foundation” took over the park in 2009, decades of wild growth, soil fillings and add-ons had rendered the original design unrecognizable. Since then, the Foundation has been striving to recover the lost paradise.