Saarbrücken Castle

Saarbrucken Castle was the residence of the counts of Nassau-Saarbrucken, rebuilt in the Baroque style between 1738 and 1748 by Count Wilhelm Heinrich and his architect Friedrich Joachim Stengel. The original plan called for a complete three-winged Baroque palace, but only the south and east wings were completed before the counts death. Severely damaged in World War II, the palace was controversially reconstructed in the 1980s with a modern glass-and-steel main wing designed by architects Bottger and Kruger, grafted onto the preserved Baroque wings. The combination of 18th-century Baroque masonry with 1980s modernist architecture makes the palace architecturally distinctive and has been the subject of ongoing debate. The castle now houses the Historisches Museum Saar, which covers Saarland history from the French Revolution through the industrial era, the Saar coal-mining heritage, and the regions complex 20th-century political status between Germany and France, including the League of Nations mandate period and the 1955 referendum. The castle square, the Schlossplatz, forms the centre of Saarbrucken, surrounded by the Baroque Altstadt with the Ludwigskirche, the Saarland State Theatre, and pedestrian streets. The castle is within walking distance from Saarbrucken Hauptbahnhof.