Benrath

German class is going well. It's a little slow for my liking but it's good. Yesterday we visited Benrath. It's a pink palace (pink symbolized celebrity at the time) and gardens that were completed in 1770 for the Palatine Elector-Prince Karl Theodor. It was meant to be a summer/hunting estate, but he never really lived there at all.

French architect Nicolas de Pigage designed this mansion with the theme of nature in mind. It was extremely important to French architects at the time to have complete symmetry. So much so, that if there was a door on one side of a room but no door opposite it, they would make a blind door (area on the wall that looks just like a door but really leads nowhere) just to keep in symmetric. Opposite every window must be a mirror. I've been known to be obsessive compulsive about symmetry, so I really enjoy classic French architecture. The estate itself is also symmetric. With the main building in the center, two identical long buildings to the sides, and two small buildings on the outsides. The gardens are very important in the estate, with a French garden on one side and an English garden on the other, as well as ponds in front and back. They also have a moat! =) I'm posting pictures on www.getjealous.com/cultural.cultivation because it's difficult to describe. We got a private tour of the interior, but pictures weren't allowed (I'm including some google images on getjealous). The palace has two identical sides (hence the symmetry). One side of the first floor belonged to Karl Theodor. It consisted of his private sitting rooms, bed chamber, and hall to entertain guests. The opposite side of the first floor belonged to his wife. It has an identical structure. In the center, is the entry, a sitting room, and the ballroom. In the ballroom, the ceiling is the hight of the entire house. There is a large opening in the center of the dome and you see a separate ceiling higher up with natural light, but you can't see the windows. This is a hidden room for the orchestra. The stairway to this room is upstairs. The point was to make guests feel like the orchestra was invisible and music was just there magically. Upstairs is the guest area with two guest suites on both sides (4 suites in all). The suites include a bedroom with 3 sitting rooms. In between the two suites is a larger sitting room for the guests to meet each other. This "second floor" is actually the third of 4 floors in the house. Between the first and third floors, and above the third floor, are servant floors. This allowed servants to move from room to room undetected by guests. Many of the doors leading to their stairways were camouflaged into the wallpaper. The floors are hidden by low ceilings on the main floors and the windows stretch through two floors giving the appearance of only two floors from the outside. Nicolas de Pigage was tricky! ;)

After a wonderful day feeling like I belong in a Jane Austen book, we hit the ice cream parlor. I had a blueberry citric liquor sundae. Of course I had to include a picture of that on getjealous too. =)