Fantaisie Castle

Fantaisie Palace is located in Eckersdorf-Donndorf, five kilometers west of Bayreuth. It was built as another summer residence (after the Eremitage, which is not as grandly designed) for the Margrave couple Friedrich and Wilhelmine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth.

During a nearly year-long trip to Italy, they gathered impressions which they then implemented in Fantaisie Palace. Wilhelmine did not live to see the start of construction; she died in 1758 at the age of 49. Friedrich began construction in 1761. He also did not live to see its completion. He died in 1763 at the age of 51 in Bayreuth.

The daughter of the Margrave couple, Princess Friederike, inherited the property in 1763. The name Fantaisie also comes from her. She had the palace built by Johann Jakob Spindler until 1765. It houses the Spindler Cabinet, an intarsia work by the brothers Johann Friedrich and Heinrich Wilhelm Spindler in a faithful replica of the original, which is located in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich.

Due to later alterations, very little of the original palace has been preserved. The captivating palace park is characterized by elements from the stylistic phases of Rococo, Sentimentalism, Romanticism, and Historicism. In the year 2000, Germany's first Garden Art Museum was established in the palace building. For several years, the park has been restored to its original state. For example, the south terraces, which face the lake, have been replanted with grapevines, the labyrinth has been recreated, and the water cascades with sandstone shells and mythical creatures have been restored.