Hello Mum,
today we went to Oranienbaum and visited the area around the castle. At the moment the castle is closed because of winter time and we couldn't go inside. But we saw the castle from outside and went to its gardens. The Gardens had its origin in the 17th century, when the marriage of Leopold's great-grandfather Prince John George II of Anhalt-Dessau to the Dutch princess Henriette Catharina, in 1659 brought a team of engineers and architects from the Low Countries to lay out the town, the palace and a Baroque garden in the former settlement of Nischwitz, which was renamed Oranienbaum in 1673. The Dutch influence remained prevalent in the Principality of Anhalt-Dessau for many decades.
Oranienbaum Palace was finished in 1683 as the summer residence of Henriette Catharina, where she retired after the death of her husband in 1693. From 1780 on Duke Leopold III had the palace and the park rebuilt in a Chinese style with several arch bridges, a tea house and a pagoda. In 1811, the orangery was built, with 175 m (574 ft) in length one of the largest in Europe, which still serves to protect a wide collection of citrus plants. It was too cold to go to the orangery!
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Princess of Orange-Nassau, inspected the restoration works on March 3, 2004.
This is the castle from the front (street view):
The castle from the backside (garden view):
The garden. I heard there are lots of palm trees in summer!
We walked to the Chinese pagoda...
Below the pagoda:
The beautiful Chinese pagoda:
It's so cold outside!!! Brrrrr...
Love,
Crawfish