The Jagdschloss Kranichstein is a former hunting lodge in the north of Darmstadt. It was originally built in 1578 for Landgrave Georg I of Hesse-Darmstadt. The castle is one of the few preserved baroque hunters' courtyards in Germany.
Today the complex houses a hunting museum and a hotel with a restaurant.
History: The focal point of the exhibition in the Museum Jagdschloss Kranichstein is courtly hunting in the Baroque period
Landgrave Georg I (1547-1596) had the three-wing Renaissance building built between 1578 and 1580 by his architect Jakob Kesselhuth.
The Hessian landgraves Ernst Ludwig (1667-1739) and Ludwig VIII (1691-1768), who were enthusiastic about hunting, organized hunting festivals here in the form of par force hunts and "discontinued hunting". The building, which was still functional at the time, was adapted to the baroque ideas of representation, elegance and luxury.
Star-shaped aisles were cut into the surrounding forest for hunting. Ludwig VIII had the baroque Dianaburg hunting lodge built in 1765 as part of the overall complex of Kranichstein Castle and located about two and a half kilometers north of it.
For more than 350 years, the site was used by the Landgraves and later Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt for hunting.
From June 1863, the palace was used as a residence by the future Grand Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse and by his wife Alice until the New Palace was completed in 1866. On June 2, 1863, Alice wrote to her mother, Queen Victoria: "When I return now, I have to unpack and pack for Kranichstein and set up the house there, which nobody has lived in for eighty years." In the years that followed, until Alice's death in 1878, Kranichstein Castle was used as a summer residence.
It only became a museum when the last Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig had all hunting equipment and accessories from all his castles and hunting lodges brought together here in 1917. Court Marshal Kuno Graf von Hardenberg set up the hunting museum.
The Hessischer Jägerhof Foundation acquired the complex after the Second World War and finally reopened the museum in 1952 with a focus on the Baroque period.
From 1988 to 1996 the palace was extensively renovated by the state of Hesse, the city of Darmstadt and the Hessischer Jägerhof Foundation. The true-to-original Renaissance version was restored on the ground floor.
It was the charming landscape with its forests, meadows and ponds, which moved Landgrave Georg I of Hesse-Darmstadt around 1580 to develop a farm estate in the north of Darmstadt to a three-winged hunting lodge in the Renaissance style. For a few decades, the nobility had fun hunting in the deer park. Today, there is a hotel and restaurant in the stately building. More information can be found here: hotel-jagdschloss-kranichstein.de.
Translated by Google •
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