Royal Palace Darmstadt

Darmstadt Residence Palace, often also called City Palace, is the former residence and administrative seat of the Landgraves and from 1806 to 1919 of the Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt, located in the center of the Hessian city of Darmstadt.

Today, the palace is located in the center of the science city of Darmstadt, at the eastern end of Rheinstraße, which leads into the city from the west.

The origins of the palace lie in the Katzenelnbogen era. In the middle of the 13th century, the Counts of Katzenelnbogen built a moated castle in Darmstadt. In 1330, Darmstadt received city rights, and a year later the castle was first mentioned. In the following two centuries, the Counts of Katzenelnbogen repeatedly expanded and rebuilt the castle. By the middle of the 15th century, the castle was transformed into a representative palace, and Darmstadt became a secondary residence of Katzenelnbogen. What remains of the moated castle are the shape of the central churchyard and the outer walls of the Herrenbau. When the last Count of Katzenelnbogen died in 1479, Darmstadt fell to Landgrave Heinrich III of Hesse. When Philipp the Magnanimous took over the government offices in 1518, the palace was first destroyed in an attack by Franz von Sickingen. The palace was rebuilt in the following years, but with essentially the same defenses. In the Schmalkaldic War in 1547, it was again destroyed by imperial troops. Landgrave Georg I (the Pious) (1547 to 1596) significantly expanded the palace into a Renaissance complex from 1567 and secured it with a moat and bastions. From 1594, he had orphans taught in the palace.

The Wallhäuschen, a gatehouse in the north of the palace complex, was built in 1627 by Jakob Müller. The Glockenbau was built from 1663 to 1671 according to plans by the architect Johann Wilhelm Pfannmüller. In 1693, Darmstadt was attacked by the French. The keep of the palace was destroyed in the process. After the palace chancellery burned down, Landgrave Ernst Ludwig commissioned the French architect Louis Remy de la Fosse in 1715 to plan a new Baroque palace with four large wings. This was to completely replace the old palace. Due to lack of money, however, only two wings were completed by 1726. These were to remain the last major structural changes to the palace. When Hesse-Darmstadt joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the palace became the seat of the Grand Dukes of Darmstadt.

In the Darmstadt fire night of September 11-12, 1944, the palace burned down to its outer walls. In twenty years of work, the external condition of the pre-war period was largely restored with great attention to detail.