Wilhelmshöhe Palace

Wilhelmshöhe Palace was built between 1786 and 1798 for Landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel (later Elector Wilhelm I) at the foot of the immense Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, the UNESCO World Heritage hill park crowned by the towering Hercules Monument. The palace is a restrained classical building with a central dome, a columned portico, and two symmetrical wings designed by architect Simon Louis du Ry, facing a formal parterre. Inside, the Schlossmuseum covers Hessian state history and the Napoleonic era — Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, made the palace his royal seat as King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813, commissioning the Empire-style interiors. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister on the upper floor is one of Germany's most important Old Masters collections, with over 200 works including Dürer's Portrait of a Young Man, Rembrandt's Saskia, Rubens's large-scale mythological paintings, and van Dyck's portraits. The palace sits directly below the Löwenburg Castle and the cascading water features of the Bergpark, which stage the famous water displays with the 50-metre-high Grand Fountain every Wednesday and Sunday afternoon from May to October. The palace is reachable by tram line 1 from Kassel Willy-Brandt-Platz in about 20 minutes.