Rosenhöhe Park is a park in eastern

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

, standing on a hill. It contains a

rose garden A rose garden or rosarium is a garden or park, often open to the public, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species. Designs vary tremendously and roses may be displayed alongside other plants or grouped ...

, with a rose dome at its highest point, the remains of the Rosenhöhe Palace, the

mausoleum A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A mausoleum without the person's remains is called a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type o ...

s of the Hessian grand-ducal family, meadows, orchards, and many tree species, including sequoias. The park serves as a recreation area. The whole Rosenhöhe Park is a protected cultural asset under the Hague Convention. The buildings of the ''

Mathildenhöhe The Darmstadt Artists' Colony refers both to a group of Jugendstil artists as well as to the buildings in Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in which these artists lived and worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, near to the Rosenhöhe Park. ...

'', or New Rosenhöhe Artists' Colony, including ''

Jugendstil (; "Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German and Austrian cou ...

'' houses and a Wedding Tower, stand on the edge of the park, but it is not part of the

Darmstadt Artists' Colony The Darmstadt Artists' Colony refers both to a group of Jugendstil artists as well as to the buildings in Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt in which these artists lived and worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, near to the Rosenhöhe Park. ...

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

History

About 1810, Princess Wilhelmina of Baden, the wife of the future

Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse Louis II (26 December 1777 – 16 June 1848) was Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 6 April 1830 until 16 June 1848. He was the son of Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt. Life Before his reign He st ...

, had the Rosenhöhe Park laid out as an

English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (, , , , ), is a style of "landscape" garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal ...

on the site of a former vineyard and planted it with exotic trees. It was given pavilions and teahouses, and a rather modest house, which as Grand Duchess Wilhelmina sometimes lived in."Die Rosenhöhe Darmstadt"
mein-da.de, accessed 16 March 2025 (in German) In 1826, the Old Mausoleum, designed by

Georg Moller Georg Moller (21 January 1784 – 13 March 1852) was an architect and a town planner who worked in the South of Germany, mostly in the region today known as Hessen. Life and family background Moller was born in Diepholz, a descendant of an old ...

, was built to house the tombs of the grand-ducal family, and the New Mausoleum was added in 1910. In 1894, a palace was built in the southern part of the park, designed by

Gustav Jacobi Gustav, Gustaf or Gustave may refer to: *Gustav (name), a male given name of Old Swedish origin Art, entertainment, and media * ''Primeval'' (film), a 2007 American horror film * ''Gustav'' (film series), a Hungarian series of animated short cart ...

in a historicist style, to serve as a residence for a younger brother of

Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse Louis IV (; 12 September 1837 – 13 March 1892) was the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine from 13 June 1877 until his death in 1892. Through his marriage to Queen Victoria's second daughter Alice, he was connected to the British royal family. T ...

, Prince William. After his death in 1900,

Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse Ernest Louis (; 25 November 1868 – 9 October 1937) was the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, reigning from 1892 until 1918. Early life Ernest Louis was the elder son of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of ...

, inherited the property and created the Rosarium. Later, the palace housed the Prussian embassy to the

Grand Duchy of Hesse The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine () was a grand duchy in western Germany that existed from 1806 to 1918. The grand duchy originally formed from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1806 as the Grand Duchy of Hesse (). It assumed the name ...

. After the First World War, it was divided into apartments. In 1944, it was severely damaged in the Allied bombing of Darmstadt and was demolished. A gate with a coat of arms and a fountain still survive, and a hedge outlines where the palace once stood. The park was taken into the ownership of the city in 1979. The Rose Dome at its highest point was demolished and rebuilt in 2009. The main entrance is at the Lion Gate, built in 1914. The gatehouse and one of Grand Duchess Wilhelmina's teahouses have also been rebuilt.

Lion Gate

The Lion Gate stands at the main entrance to the Rosenhöhe, consisting of six

clinker brick Clinker bricks are partially-vitrified bricks used in the construction of buildings. Clinker bricks are produced when wet clay bricks are exposed to excessive heat during the firing process, sintering the surface of the brick and forming a shi ...

pillars designed by

Albin Müller Albin Camillo Müller (13 December 1871 – 2 October 1941), also known as Albinmüller, was a German architect and designer active in Darmstadt. In 1906 he was appointed to the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, where he became the lead architect after ...

, on which are six lion sculptures by

Bernhard Hoetger Bernhard Hoetger (4 May 1874 in Dortmund – 18 July 1949 in Interlaken) was a German sculptor, painter and handicrafts artist of the Expressionist movement. Life Hoetger was the son of a Dortmund blacksmith, he studied sculpture in Detmold f ...

dating from 1914. The gates between the pillars have relief panels made in 1967 by the local artist Hermann Tomada, replicas of work by Hoetger. The Lion Gate was originally created as the main portal of the 4th Darmstadt Artists' Colony Exhibition of 1914 on the ''Mathildenhöhe'', where the cast concrete lions stood on cast-stone double columns with Ionic capitals. After the exhibition, the gate was dismantled and stored. In 1927, Grand Duke Ernest Louis had it put up where it stands now. The lions are sometimes called the "sneezing hedgehogs"."Das Löwentor", ''Darmstädter Echo'', 7 November 2019, p. 12

Gallery

Darmstadt-Rosenhoehe-Altes Mausoleum.jpg, Old Mausoleum Darmstadt-Rosenhoehe-Neues Mausoleum.jpg, New Mausoleum Darmstadt-Rosenhöhe-2005-03-31.jpg, Gatekeeper's house or guardhouse Darmstadt-Rosenhoehe01.jpg, Inside the Rose Dome Darmstadt Rosenhöhe.jpg, The Rosenhöhe in summer Palais Rosenhoehe Darmstadt 04.jpg, Gate with coat of arms at the former Rosenhöhe Palace 2020_11_Spanischer_Turm_DA.jpg, The Spanish Tower

Notes

{{coord, 49, 52, 35, N, 8, 40, 42, E, type:landmark_region:DE, display=title Rose gardens Parks in Germany