Neuwied Castle

Neuwied Castle is the former residential castle of the Counts and Princes of Wied in Neuwied, a district town in northern Rhineland-Palatinate. Until 1806, the castle was the seat of government of the Principality of Wied. The castle is located in the northern part of Neuwied's city center, in the immediate vicinity of the Rhine bank and south of the confluence of the Wied River with the Rhine.

Before the construction of the castle in Neuwied, the Counts of Wied had their ancestral seat at Altwied Castle in the Wiedtal for over 500 years. Because the building fabric of Wied Castle, as it was then called, began to fall into disrepair and the castle and its location no longer met the requirements of the early modern era in military and economic terms, Count Friedrich III of Wied decided in the mid-17th century to found a new city directly on the banks of the Rhine and move his seat of power there.

Initially, in 1648, he began building Friedrichstein Castle in what is now the Neuwied district of Fahr and a small fortress in Langendorf, which he called "Neuenwied" and which was already referred to as a castle. The village of Langendorf was largely destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. At the same time, he had Emperor Ferdinand III transfer the city rights, which had already been granted for Nordhofen in the Westerwald in 1357 but not realized there, to the new settlement of Neuwied (1653).

Despite its fortifications, this first building was set on fire and destroyed by French troops in the War of the Palatine Succession in 1694.

According to plans by the Nassau-Weilburg master builder Julius Ludwig Rothweil, Count Friedrich Wilhelm began rebuilding the residence around 1706. It was only completed between 1748 and 1756 under Karl Behaghel von Adlerskron from Frankfurt, who also built the nearby Wied summer residence Monrepos Castle from 1757.

Rothweil's building plans envisioned a horseshoe-shaped complex, popular in German Baroque, modeled after Versailles. However, the connecting buildings planned in the first design were not executed, so three independent buildings were created around the castle courtyard.

The exterior of the main building (Corps de Logis) was completed in 1711, the interior in 1713. At the same time, construction began on the two wing buildings, which were only completed about 40 years later. The staircase, the upper vestibule, and the ballroom were stuccoed by Giovanni Battista Genone and Eugenio Castelli from 1714 to 1715. The gate passage and the two guardhouses were built in 1719 and 1720. The lions with the coat of arms above the gate passage date from the mid-18th century.

Between 1869 and 1873, the main building was renovated, the exterior in Rothweil's forms, the interior partly in Neo-Baroque forms. The iron gate closing off the courtyard of honor dates from 1887.

The side wings housed utility and storage rooms, kitchen, washhouse, winery, and stables.

On September 10, 1948, a fire destroyed the central part of the right side building, which housed the Rentkammer (treasury), the kitchen, the library, and the Princely Wied Archive. Furnishings and several gala carriages of the princely family were burned. In the summer of 1949, work could resume in the newly rebuilt central wing.

In 1715, a symmetrical Baroque garden was laid out, extending the castle axis and parallel to the Rhine, according to plans by Behagel von Adlerskron.

During the reign of Prince Friedrich Karl zu Wied (1791–1802), the park was redesigned in the style of English landscape gardens. Many exotic plants were also planted, which likely originated from Prince Maximilian zu Wied's travels to America. The park could also be described as an arboretum. The park now extended over an area of 24 hectares to the mouth of the Wied. In 1870, it was redesigned with the advice of the Muskau garden director Eduard Petzold.