In the 18th century, a new style of garden art developed in England. The landscape park was intended to recreate nature in an idealized form and take the viewer into a walk-in landscape painting. After his Grand Tour in 1765, the England enthusiast Prince Franz began to create such a park in Wörlitz based on the English model. It was the first of its kind on the European mainland. With the parks Luisium, Sieglitzer Berg, Georgium and Großkühnau in the immediate vicinity, this model of modern garden art was also followed.

The landscape parks were subtly linked with the older Rococo and Baroque palace parks in Oranienbaum and Mosigkau. In this way, Prince Franz elegantly incorporated the important facilities of his ancestors into the redesign of his principality via paths, visual axes and avenues and created a unique landscape work of art within 40 years – today’s Garden Realm of Dessau-Wörlitz. On 142 km², it can still be experienced 250 years later and is best explored by bike!

The Garden Realm brings together the art genres of different eras and countries. Architecture and art from antiquity to classicism meet in the landscape, in the gardens and parks as well as in the palaces and collections: sculptures, temples, gates, bridges, castles, paintings, furniture, and much more. Prince Franz found numerous stimuli on his educational trips – the so-called Grand Tours – in England, France, Italy and the Netherlands. But it is not only the variety of art that is of particular importance in the Garden Realm. It is the high quality of the buildings and their furnishings that is due to Prince Franz’s passion for collecting and the work of important architects such as Friedrich Willhelm von Erdmannsdorf.

What you should also know: Wörlitz Palace(1769–1773) was the first classicist building in German architectural history! And not only classicism, but also neo-Gothic began in Germany with the Gothic House (from 1773) in Wörlitzer Park.

Prince Franz pursued one goal with the restructuring of his principality entirely in the spirit of the Enlightenment: the education and moral education of his people. To this end, he revolutionised the education system with the founding of the Dessau Philanthropin – and opened the palaces and gardens to his guests 250 years ago.

There they were able to see the latest technical and artistic achievements from all over Europe. In order to bring the world to Anhalt-Dessau in miniature, distant places and famous buildings were imitated and even entire landscapes were recreated. On the Isle of Rock in Wörlitzer Park, guests still find themselves in a small version of the Neapolitan coastal region at the foot of Mount Vesuvius: an artificial volcano, Lombard papules, agaves and figs, a wine pergola and a Roman theatre enable a journey around the world and time in miniature.

The prince’s guiding principle was to combine the “useful with the pleasant” – an enlightened approach that can be traced back to a quote from the Roman poet Horace. Even today, long avenues of fruit trees and wide orchards or the dikes used as connecting paths bear witness to the fact that garden art and agriculture were understood as a unit in the Garden Realm. The demonstration of modern agricultural methods also served to educate the population.