Story Title: Rastatt Palace
Episode: 6
Broadcast Date: 1st February 2014
Presenter: Trevor Cochrane

Guests on a Europe River Cruise and Tours program get to experience an exclusive evening of music and cuisine at Rastatt Palace in Germany’s Black Forest.

Grand Architecture

• Rastatt is located at the mouth of the Murg valley where it enters the plain of the Upper Rhine.
• Rastatt Palace is the oldest baroque residence on the Upper Rhine and modelled on the opulent French Palace of Versailles.
• In 1700, after construction had started on a hunting palace at Rastatt, Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden-Baden decided that it should be expanded. Envisioning a grand residence modelled on Versailles he commissioned an Italian architect, Domenico Egidio Rossi to create his vision.
• After the margrave’s early death in 1707, his young widow Sibylla Augusta oversaw the completion of the palace complex and its sumptuous interiors. 
• The largest and most magnificent room is the Ahnensaal, ancestral hall. The many frescoes depict not only the margrave’s ancestors, but also a host of captured Ottomans commemorating the margrave’s victories in the wars against the Ottoman Empire.
• The glass in the windows, many pieces of furniture, as well as the tapestries, the wall papering and the ceiling's paintings and murals are all original.
• The color of the place today is not actually the original shade. It was found that the original color of the palace was almost strawberry red, apparently not a strange color to paint Baroque palaces of its day.
• For more information on European Tours click here.

Contact
Scenic Tours
P: 1300 723 642
E: www.scenictours.com.au/contact-us/
W: www.scenictours.com.au