Saarbrücker Schloss

Saarbrücker Schloss rises in Saarbrücken, the capital of Saarland, a Baroque château with three wings around a central pavilion. A symmetrical garden belongs to the whole composition. The building offers wheelchair access, so you can study every wing at close range.

The ground beneath it carries a far older story. A castle called Castell Sarabruca stood here in the Middle Ages, and by 1009 it was known as Veste Sarebrugka. Emperor Henry IV granted it as a fief to Count Adalbero III of Luxembourg in the eleventh century. In 1168 Count Symon razed the fortress on Emperor Frederick I's orders. Count John II fortified it again in the fifteenth century with a bulwark and a drawbridge. In the sixteenth century Count Philip IV built a summer residence, its trapezoid-shaped inner court lined with buildings and towers. Drawings by Heinrich Höers from the following century show four wings with bastions and defensive towers. Imperial troops destroyed the whole complex in 1677, and Josef C. Motte restored it around 1696. The decisive turn came with Friedrich Joachim Stengel, who removed the defences and shaped an open, refined palace. He completed the work in 1748, and for nearly fifty years the palace served as the principality's cultural and administrative centre.

The centuries after Stengel treated the building roughly. Fire partly destroyed it during the French Revolution, and the reconstructed rooms later housed middle-class families. Hugo Dihm added a new hall in 1872, after Johann Adam Knipper had rebuilt the north wing. The twentieth century brought a Neo-Baroque façade in 1938 and the seat of the district government. During the Nazi era the palace served as the Gestapo headquarters. A drawbridge, a trapezoid court, a Baroque garden and a Gestapo headquarters all belong to this one address.