Covering approximately 4 hectares, the Dornburg Palace Gardens comprise several distinct areas: the landscape garden at the Renaissance Palace, the geometrically designed garden in front of the Rococo Palace, and the orchard and grass garden at the Old Palace.
From 1736, the steep slopes down to the River Saale beneath the Palaces were converted into vineyards. The first designs for the Rococo Palace garden date from 1735/36. In the early 19th century, additions included the ash walk, the tea terrace with “acacias”, the rose arbour walk and numerous rose espaliers. From 1824, Carl August Christian Sckell laid out the small landscape garden at the Renaissance Palace for Grand Duke Carl August of Saxe‑Weimar‑Eisenach, featuring meandering paths, groups of trees and flowerbeds.
After initial restoration work by the Goethe Society from 1926 to 1928, extensive renewal and reconstruction followed from the 1950s. In 1966, the garden parterre to the north‑east of the Rococo Palace was redesigned according to a baroque‑inspired plan by the garden architect Hermann Schüttauf.
The Renaissance castle is closed due to renovation work.
Dornburg Castles
Max-Krehan-Straße 2
07774 Dornburg-Camburg
Dornburg Castles Museum
website
Bauhaus Workshop Museum
Website
Dornburg Castles Museum
Season from April to October
02 April – 01 November 2026
daily except Wednesdays 10 am – 5 pm
Also open on Wednesdays on public holidays
Museum tickets
Park and garden
Open all year round from 9 a.m. until sunset
Free admission
Dogs allowed on a lead
With the acquisition of the Renaissance Palace, the unification of the three palaces became a task for garden art. Carl August entrusted this to Carl August Christian Sckell, who came from a family of garden artists active throughout Germany.
On the site of the former manor, he created a small landscape park and wove it together with the intimate garden spaces around the Rococo Palace and the Old Palace. Terraced paths on the steep slope link the gardens, offering sweeping views over the River Saale Valley. The parterres at the Rococo Palace were given intricate designs with flowerbeds and arbour walks. The northern parterre today is a 1960s re‑creation drawing on baroque forms. At the Old Palace, modern design echoes Renaissance garden ideas.
The Dornburg Palace Gardens are famous for their countless roses, both historical and modern varieties, as well as for the vineyards cultivated below the terraces.
Shortly after his arrival, Goethe wrote to his friend Carl Friedrich Zelter:
“The view is magnificent and cheerful, the flowers are in bloom in the well‑kept gardens, the vine trellises are heavily laden, and beneath my window I see a thriving vineyard which the deceased had planted on the most barren slope only three years ago, and whose greening he had the pleasure of enjoying during the last Whitsun days of his life. On the other sides the rose arbours are adorned to a fairy‑tale degree, and the mallows and what not are blooming and colourful, and to me it all appears in heightened colours like a rainbow on a black‑grey background.”
To help you plan your visit, you will find a map here with paths that are suitable for wheelchair users or visitors with pushchairs.
