Wilhelmsthal Castle (Calden)

The palace was designed by François de Cuvilliés as a loosely arranged three-wing complex. The design of the facades already shows slight tendencies towards Classicism. Simon Louis du Ry only took over the construction management in 1756. The guardhouses in front of the palace are his work.

The designs for the interior also go back to Cuvilliés. The sculptor Johann August Nahl (the Elder) created the precious wall paneling and many stucco works. Not all of the rooms, which were originally executed in pure Rococo, have survived. Many furnishings come from Wilhelmshöhe Palace.

Particularly noteworthy is the so-called Gallery of Beauties with numerous portraits by Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder.

The chapel in the north wing is used by the Protestant community and the Calden registry office. Some rooms of the palace serve as a museum and event venue.

Contrary to usual landscape arrangements, the palace is located at the lowest point of the park. The garden was planned as a fan-shaped three-axis system and is itself embedded in a larger landscape composition, which is concluded in the west and east by a lime tree rondel each. The central axis was intended as a water-bearing cascade, which flowed into the palace basin, originally framed in strict Baroque symmetry. The execution was partially implemented. Due to the Seven Years' War, work came to a standstill. Around 1800, the park was further developed into a landscape park with loose woodland, the basin was adapted to a naturally formed pond in the greenery, and the cascades were filled in. A Gothicizing observation tower was built from the stones of the cascades of the central axis.

In an elongated hill on the north axis is the former ice cellar, where ice was stored in the winter months to serve as cold storage in the summer. From the initial phase, only the grotto, which is the showpiece of the south axis, remains today. It was created by the sculptor Peter Laporterie, who richly decorated it with shells and glass. Originally, gilded putti were placed throughout the park. The sculptures, consisting of lead cladding and rosin wax fillings, suffer from changes in weather, so that now only the best-preserved ones adorn the balustrade of the grotto. The canal with the water features in front of the grotto as part of the south axis was only reconstructed after the Second World War. In the eastern extension of the south axis, directly behind the grotto, lies the (overgrown) water reservoir of the water features. Further east is the duck pond with the duck island built from roughly broken rocks. The duck house, built in a Chinese-like style on the duck island, is no longer preserved.