Herrenhausen Palace (German: Schloss Herrenhausen) is a former royal summer residence of the House of Hanover in the Herrenhausen district of the German city of Hanover. It is the centrepiece of Herrenhausen Gardens. Sophia of Hanover oversaw the development of the estate in the late 1600s.
The 17th century palace was destroyed by a Royal Air Force bombing raid in 1943 during World War II and reconstructed between 2009 and 2013. Today it houses a museum, a division of the Historisches Museum Hannover, and exhibition space.
Originally a manor house of 1640, the building was enlarged in phases from 1676, and served as a summer retreat, located only a few kilometers outside the city from the central Leine Palace. In 1683 Sophia of Hanover commissioned the French gardener Martin Charbonnier [1] to enlarge the garden in the manner of Versailles to form the 50-hectare (120-acre) Great Garden (Großer Garten). Sophia's husband, Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, planned the retreats replacement with a large baroque palace, and began construction with the Galerie, but their son, elector George Louis, who in 1714 succeeded to the British throne as King George I, gave up the palace building project and concentrated on adding water features to the garden.
The next elector, George II of Great Britain (r. 1727–1760), planned again for a new palace in better proportion with the Great Garden, but never realized it. His successor George III (r. 1760–1820), who never visited Herrenhausen, had the palace modernised in neoclassical style by Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves.
During World War II, Herrenhausen Palace was destroyed in a bombing raid by the Royal Air Force on 18 October 1943.
The ruins of the palace were almost completely torn down after the war; the outside staircase once leading up to the entrance was salvaged from the debris and moved next to the Orangerie building where it can be seen today. Ernest Augustus of Hanover sold his remaining property at Herrenhausen Gardens in 1961, but kept the nearby Prince House (Fürstenhaus), a small palace built in 1720 by George I for his daughter Anna Louise. It is now his grandson August of Hanover's private home.
In 2009, the city of Hanover took the decision to rebuild the palace. The Volkswagen Foundation received the plot and sponsored the reconstruction. Following extensive restoration work, the palace was reopened on 18 January 2013 [2] in a ceremony attended by Beatrice and Eugenie of York, as well as August.
The reconstructed baroque palace houses the Herrenhausen Palace Museum (Museum Schloss Herrenhausen) [3] with a cafeteria and a bookshop, as well as exhibition and meeting spaces sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation.
The palace's extensive gardens extending beyond the original Great Garden are an important example of baroque and later garden design and contain many significant period garden buildings. The gardens were reinstated following major damage in World War II, and became an important leisure resource for the city of Hanover, with new additions including an aquarium.
King George II of Great Britain was born in Herrenhausen Palace in 1683. Three of his daughters were born there: [4]
Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, George II's grandfather, died in Herrenhausen Palace in 1698.
After World War II the remains of George I of Great Britain, along with those of his parents, were removed from the chapel of Leine Palace in Hanover and reinterred in the 19th-century Guelph mausoleum (Welfenmausoleum) in the Hill Garden at Herrenhausen. [5] [6]
Sophia was Electress of Hanover from 19 December 1692 until 23 January 1698 as the consort of Prince Elector Ernest Augustus. She was later the heiress presumptive to the thrones of England and Scotland and Ireland under the Act of Settlement 1701, as a granddaughter of King James VI and I. Sophia died less than two months before she would have become Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Consequently, her son George I succeeded her first cousin once removed, Queen Anne, to the British throne, and the succession to the throne has since been defined as, and composed entirely of, Sophia's legitimate and Protestant descendants.
George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.
Herrenhausen-Stöcken is a borough of the German city of Hanover, northwest of the city centre. In 2020 it had a population of 37,543. It consists of the quarters Burg, Herrenhausen, Ledeburg, Leinhausen, Marienwerder and Stöcken.
The House of Hanover is a European, royal house with roots tracing back to the 17th century. Its members, known as Hanoverians, ruled Hanover, Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire at various times during the 17th to 20th centuries. Originating as a cadet branch of the House of Welf in 1635, also known then as the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Hanoverians ascended to prominence with Hanover's elevation to an Electorate in 1692. In 1714 George I, prince-elector of Hanover and a descendant of King James VI and I, assumed the throne of Great Britain and Ireland, marking the beginning of Hanoverian rule over the British Empire. At the end of his line, Queen Victoria's death in 1901, the throne of the United Kingdom passed to her eldest son Edward VII, a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, through his father Albert, Prince Consort. The last reigning members of the House of Hanover lost the Duchy of Brunswick in 1918 when Germany became a republic and abolished royalty and nobility.
The Duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg, commonly known as the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg or Brunswick-Lüneburg, was an imperial principality of the Holy Roman Empire in the territory of present day Lower Saxony.
The House of Welf is a European dynasty that has included many German and British monarchs from the 11th to 20th century and Emperor Ivan VI of Russia in the 18th century. The originally Franconian family from the Meuse-Moselle area was closely related to the imperial family of the Carolingians.
Ernst August von Hanover is the head of the House of Hanover, members of which reigned in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1714 to 1901, the Kingdom of Hanover from 1814 to 1866, and the Duchy of Brunswick from 1913 to 1918. As the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, he is the brother-in-law of Albert II, Prince of Monaco.
Ernest Augustus ; 17 November 1887 – 30 January 1953) was Duke of Brunswick from 2 November 1913 to 8 November 1918. He was a grandson of George V of Hanover, thus a Prince of Hanover and a Prince of the United Kingdom. He was also a maternal grandson of Christian IX of Denmark and the son-in-law of German Emperor Wilhelm II. The Prussians had deposed King George from the Hanoverian throne in 1866, but his marriage ended the decades-long feud between the Prussians and the Hanoverians.
Ernst August, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Prince of Hanover was head of the House of Hanover from 1953 until his death in 1987. From his birth until the German Revolution of 1918–1919 he was the heir apparent to the Duchy of Brunswick, a state of the German Empire.
Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia was the only daughter and youngest child of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, and Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. Through her father, Victoria Louise was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, was Prince of Calenberg from 1679 until his death, and father of George I of Great Britain. He was appointed as the ninth prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire in 1692.
Ernest Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, was the younger brother of George I of Great Britain. Ernest Augustus was a soldier and served with some distinction under Emperor Leopold I during the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1715, he became Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück.
The Herrenhausen Gardens of Herrenhausen Palace are located in Herrenhausen, an urban district of Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony, Germany. Dating to the era of the Kings of Hanover, they comprise Great Garden, Hill Garden, Georgen Garden and Guelf Garden.
The Leine Palace, situated on the Leine in Hanover, Germany, is a former residence of the Hanoverian dukes, electors and kings. It is now the seat of the parliament of Lower Saxony.
Ernst August, Hereditary Prince of Hanover is the eldest child of Ernst August, Prince of Hanover, and his first wife Chantal Hochuli. Due to his father's second marriage, he is also the stepson of Caroline, Princess of Hanover, a Monegasque Princess and the sister of Albert II of Monaco.
Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves was a German architect, civil engineer and urban planner. Born in Uslar, Lower Saxony, he lived and worked primarily in the city of Hanover and also died there. He was appointed Oberhofbaudirektor, "court master builder", in 1852. As the leading architect of the Kingdom of Hanover for a career spanning 50 years, he had great influence on the urban development of this city. Alongside Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Berlin and Leo von Klenze in Munich, Laves was one of the most accomplished neoclassical style architects of Germany. As an engineer he developed a special iron truss lenticular or "fishbelly" beam bridge construction method, the so-called "Lavesbrücke". Laves found his final resting place in the Engesohde Cemetery in Hanover.
Marienburg Castle is a Gothic revival castle in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) north-west of Hildesheim, and around 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Hanover, in the municipality of Pattensen. A summer residence of the House of Welf in the past, it is now owned by the Marienburg Castle Foundation chaired by former owner Ernst August of Hanover but publicly funded in part by the state of Lower Saxony. The castle was a filming location in the Amazon Prime Video series Maxton Hall.
The Hill Garden is a historic botanical garden, one of the gardens of the Herrenhäuser Gärten, around the residence Herrenhäuser Schloss in Herrenhausen, now part of Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany. The garden was first created in 1666 as a vegetable garden on a hill north of the palace, and then transformed into a garden for exotic plants. In 1750, it was developed into a botanical garden, with some unusual trees from the period still surviving. It features a palm house, first built in 1846, and a mausoleum, where members of the royal family were interred. Damaged by air raids in World War II, the gardens were restored. In 2000, a house for rain forest-themed gardens was added, which was transformed to an aquarium in 2007.
Girolamo Sartonio, also known as Hieronimo Sartorio and Geronimo Sartorio, was an innovative Italian architect and engineer who worked mainly the German cities of Hanover, Hamburg, Leipzig and Erfurt. His designs were based on Palladian architecture. He was a noted expert in the installation of stage equipment and theatrical machinery and also worked as a builder or consulting architect on the construction of various opera houses, such as the Oper am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg. He is also credited with the beginnings of opera in Leipzig and the construction of the opera house in Prague.
The Welfenschloss is a former royal palace in Hanover, Germany, which serves as the main building of the Leibniz University Hannover. The university is housed in the palace since 1879. The palace is surrounded by a large English landscape garden, named the Welfengarten.
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