Luisium Castle

In the middle of the UNESCO World Heritage Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm stands the Luisium, the Neoclassical country house of Princess Louise of Anhalt-Dessau, surrounded by a 14-hectare English landscape park with Neoclassical and Neo-Gothic follies.

In 1767, Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz von Anhalt-Dessau (1740–1817) married his cousin Louise Henriette Wilhelmine von Brandenburg-Schwedt (1750–1811). From 1774–78, he had a country house built in her honor according to plans by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff: a private retreat and later widow's residence. In 1780, on the princess's birthday, the house and park received their name.

At the same location, the Baroque "Vogelherd" had previously been situated, which Prince Dietrich acquired for the hereditary prince in 1753; a small castle, probably also a hunting lodge, was demolished for the Luisium. The two-story brick plaster building rises as a cube with sides of twelve meters over a basement, enclosed by a pyramid roof with a belvedere. To the south, a seven-step sandstone staircase leads to the main portal, to the north, a carriage driveway. Three earth embankments protect the complex from flooding. The ballroom is on the ground floor; on the upper floor are the Mirror, Pompeian, Painting, and Graphic Cabinets, as well as the library, plus a mezzanine. Painting and stucco characterize the interiors.

Court gardener Johann Friedrich Eyserbeck began laying out the park with sightlines in 1774: to the west, the princess's landscape garden, to the east, the prince's kitchen garden. The complex includes the Chinese (White) Bridge from 1766, Erdmannsdorff's single-story orangery around 1782 in the kitchen garden, the gardener's house and other buildings as an open four-wing complex, furthermore the Pegasus Fountain, the sculpture "The Veiled Image of Sais," the Snake House, the Flower Garden House, and the Ruin Arch. From 1779–81, the Neo-Gothic stud farm was built to the southeast on the former foal pasture; the brick stables facing the Luisium show ornate display gables with a rearing horse. A wall separates pastures and park, invisible from the house.