When staying in Essen in Germany last August I mostly asked my hosts what they wanted to show me, and just trotted along after them, learning and enjoying the adventure.  It’s a wonderful way to travel, because you get to see things that mean something to the people who live there, and get introduced to amazing stuff you might never have assumed was interesting (like the German Mining Museum and the best table centrepiece ever!).

But I did have one request.  Could we go see Schloss Benrath in Düsseldorf?  I’d seen pictures of the palace online, and it is so pretty!  (and I wanted to see at least one castle in every country I visited 🤣).

So we made a girls day of it: Ripeka and Miss Six and I touring pretty pink pleasure palaces and the stunning park.

Let me tell you, the pictures I saw online did not begin to do this place justice!  It’s so utterly perfect and darling!

(I can’t say my photos really do it justice either, but they are hopefully a little better than the Wikipedia images, which are frankly pretty lacklustre).

Schloss Benrath was built between 1755 and 1770.  It was commissioned by Elector Palatinate Charles Theodore and his first wife, Countess Palatine Elisabeth Auguste of Sulzbach.  It was designed by French builder/architect Nicolas de Pigage.

The palace is a perfect miniature jewellery box of a house, with a suite of rooms each for the Elector and Electress on either side of the house, connected by a secret corridor (secret tunnel!) through the middle of the house, and three large receptions rooms on either side of the house.  Upstairs there are smaller rooms for attendants (unfortunately we weren’t able to see them), and the cellars held kitchens.

Visitors and other attendants were housed in the two side annex buildings.  Today the annexes house the Museum for European Garden Art and the Museum of Natural History.  We only managed to see the first, and it was amazing: I’ll do a post on it.

But, back to the palace!

It’s the absolute perfect size: just big enough to be interesting and to feel fully worth the entry fee, but not so big that you walk through the rooms in a daze of elaborately sculpted ceilings and inlaid marble floors, thinking “wow, the 300th most amazing room I’ve ever seen in my life” until your eyes glaze over.

With only 12ish of them, we had the energy to admire each individual ceiling, and to learn about the wall mouldings and frescoes.

The ceilings really were fabulous.

And the floors!  I dream of the floors!

We wore wool slippers over our shoes to protect them (except Miss Six who just had to clean hers)

I learned that you can actually book a photoshoot at Schloss Benrath, and I dream of going back to get something more glamorous than mirror selfies.  In period accurate dress, natch…

According to the audio guide to the palace, it’s possible that Charles and Elisabeth never actually visited the palace, or that only Elisabeth ever used it, as their marriage effectively ended in 1768, and they saw each other as little as possible.

A wonderful visit, and a perfect day – with the most perfectly behaved six year old I’ve ever met!  We spent almost 5 hours trotting around the house, museum, and park (with a break for lunch) and she was cheerful and interested in everything the whole time, with impeccable museum etiquette.  And then we climbed back in the car at the end, popped her in her safety seat, and within 3 minutes she was fast asleep, utterly worn out.