The Orangerie is an

orangery An orangery or orangerie was a room or a dedicated building on the grounds of fashionable residences of Northern Europe from the 17th to the 19th centuries where orange and other fruit trees were protected during the winter, as a very large ...

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, Hesse, Germany. It was built under Landgrave Charles between 1703 and 1711. Since then, it forms the northern corner of the

Karlsaue The Karlsaue Park is a public and inner-city park of in Kassel (Northern Hesse, Germany). It was redesigned as a landscape garden in 1785 and consists of a mixture of visible Baroque garden elements and arranged “natural areas”. Location ...

park. Today it is used as an astronomy and physical cabinet.

History

The ground of the Orangerie was an old garden, in which Landgrave William IV built a small summer house. His successor, Landgrave Moritz redesigned the garden in the 17th century. The baroque castle of today was designed and built by the architect Johann Conrad Giesler in 1702, who worked on the court of the landgrave. The main building is 139.40 meters long. The marble bath (Marmorbad) was designed by

Pierre-Étienne Monnot Pierre-Étienne Monnot (9 August 1657 – 24 August 1733) was a French sculptor from the Franche-Comté who settled in Rome in 1687 for the rest of his life. He was a distinguished artist working in a late- Baroque idiom for international client ...

and is shown as a separate museum today. In World War II, the Orangerie was damaged and later repaired to host the federal garden show 1955. After the show the building was restored and transformed into the astronomy and physical cabinet with planetarium; in 1996 an astronomical garden was added. During the

documenta 12 documenta 12 was the twelfth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 16 June and 23 September 2007 in Kassel, Germany. The artistic director was Roger M. Buergel in collaboration with Ruth ...

, the space in front of the Orangerie was used for the exhibition, which included a temporary 9,500 square meter hall named ''Auepavillon''. {{Authority control Kassel Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel