Tuesday 17 February 2015

Exploring

Last Sunday was mostly sunny and dry, although not as warm as I had hoped after a very mild Saturday. My Mum and I went for a walk which at first I thought was simply going to lead us to familiar places, but ended with me exploring an area I never thought I would be able to see close-up.

Our intention was mainly to have a look at the palace grounds, the beautiful park you've seen featuring on my blog many times before. We wanted to check what - if any - spring flowers were already out. Compare the following pictures with these from April 2014 to get an idea of what it is going to look like soon again:


What we saw were mainly snowdrops and the little yellow flowers called "Winterling" in German (I know I "know" the English name, but it escapes me at the moment), but there also was a small patch of bright pink cyclamen.

My Mum then suggested we go across the road from the palace grounds, where one of six remaining gate houses is situated. Ludwigsburg, although a relatively new town that was founded only in 1704, once used to have a city wall, and there were houses at each gate for the watch posts. Six of these houses are still there; they were renovated in 2004 and now house various exhibitions and institutions. Not that long ago, a fellow blogger from my region posted about the six gate houses. His post is in German, but you can have a look at the pictures he took here.
The one we went to is the one with the green shutters (4th picture from top), the one that sticks out as being of a very different build than the other five.

A civic society has use of the rooms. On the ground floor, they run a little café, and the top floor shows changing exhibitions throughout the year. It is all run by volunteers who are very friendly and enthusiastic about their work. We had a drink there and looked at the current exhibition (soldiers and other toys made of tin, set up in beautiful dioramas, as well as explanations about how tin figures are made, and their history).

I'd not been inside the building before, so that was already something new for me to explore. But the best was yet to come!

When I was a little girl (and also much later when I was not so little anymore), every time we drove along a certain road, I tried to catch as much of a beautiful villa set back from the road in a small park: the "Marienwahl" (literally, "Marie's choice"). Back then, it was a private residence, and since I did not know the people who lived there, there was no way I was ever getting closer to the villa than what I could glimpse from the car.

After nobody lived there anymore from 1988 onwards, the villa fell into a kind of sleep - the way you'd imagine Sleeping Beauty's castle, covered in thorns, hidden behind hedges and trees that would grow higher year after year.
The owners lived elsewhere, and various plans were made for the site, such as erecting flats for senior citizens in the grounds, but nothing really came about. Eventually, a big effort was made and both villa and park were largely restored until 2006.

Somehow, I completely missed the fact that the park now has a public foot path running through it; I was delighted when my Mum showed me the gate and I was able to walk there for the very first - but cetainly not the last! - time in my life!
The building itself is rented out to a company, so I still haven't been inside, but I've had a good look around.

Here is the main building:


Sorry about the ugly covering of the fountain - it is winter...

There are two identical buildings left and right at the park wall to flank the villa. They, too, were beautifully restored:

When the last King of Wuerttemberg's family still lived here, extensive stables were part of the grounds. Especially Pauline, the King's daughter, was a "horse woman". She was born in the villa in 1877 and returned to the place of her childhood when she became a widow.  King Wilhelm II. loved the villa so much that he made sure his funeral procession went through the grounds and past the building.

The stables were left in their ruined state but made secure enough for people to walk there. You know by now how much neglected, ruined places attract me, and these stables are no exception:


The floor here is not paved in cobbles, but in hardwood parquet - no luxury was spared to give the king's horses suitable quarters!
 


Unfortunately (although it is probably better in the long run), access to this mysterious staircase is blocked by iron bars. You know I would have climbed down there otherwise!



Princess Pauline, the horse woman, died in 1965. She wanted her last resting place to be near her beloved horses and is buried in the grounds.


Like I said before, this was a "first" for me - and I am already looking forward to going back and see the changes throughout the seasons. Thank you, Mum, for showing me this!

15 comments:

  1. Wonderful! I'm sure that that won't be the last season we shall see mirrored in those grounds. What a great find that must have been for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was, Graham! And I can't wait to see what it will look like when all the trees and shrubs in the grounds come back to life. It does look a bit bleak right now.

      Delete
  2. Like a Secret Garden! I love it! Your Mum is the best!
    All the king's horses...that reminds me of Humpty Dumpty.
    Glad the Princess is buried near where she spent so much time with her beloved horses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She cetainly is, Kay!
      Having died only in 1965, of course the Princess was still alive and often about town when my Mum was a kid. Pauline had a reputation of being something of a despotic, tough old lady, not a very nice person at all. Sometimes people like this get along much better with animals than with people, don't they?

      Delete
  3. Wonderful! You were able to see a new place which you had always wanted to see. It's great that your mother knew about this and could take you there. I confess, ruined abandoned places always attract me to and lead me to imagining all sort of things about the lives that were lived there. You are very lucky to have so many wonderful places to visit and walk in so near your home. I love the cyclamen and the winter aconite. I look forward to seeing them around my home in the weeks to come, but it won't be very soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aconite, that's it, thank you, Kristi!
      Yes, I feel fortunate to call this my home town, where I am never short of places to go to for a run, a walk, a good meal or a fun night out - and all on foot, for that matter :-)

      Delete
    2. See the header for Weaver of Grass......

      Delete
  4. Fantastic trip through the grounds. What an interesting story of royalty and nature mixed together. I hope you take us back in the spring. I will share this with my daughter who is also a horsewoman. (And, an equine surgeon as well.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you liked my little trip! Oh, there is much more I could write about Pauline, the villa and her family. While I was looking up some dates and facts about the place to use in this post, I came across some more things I had not known. Maybe that's worth a post on its own.

      Delete
  5. It's wonderful when one can find "new old" places in one's own town to explore, isn't it! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. It’s good to know that the old house has been rescued for posterity.
    I never knew there was a King of Wuerttemberg; I thought the ruler must have been a duke or Arch Duke like in so many of the principalities.

    The little yellow flowers look like winter aconites to me. True?

    Yes, it was Tatort again Sunday night. I watch it when I can; it’s easy because it’s at 7.1 for me and English programmes don’t really start until 9 here 10 with you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are right on the aconites, Friko. We call them Winterlinge.
      Wuerttemberg became a kingdom only by a special deal the then Duke cut with Napoleon. It went more or less like this:
      N: Hey, Duke, I want to go conquer Russia. Give me 15.000 men to boost my army.
      D: Well, always happy to oblige, but what's in it for me?
      N: Let me think... got it: I'll make you king. King of Wuerttemberg, how does that sound?
      D: Great! Deal!
      So he gave Napoleon 15.000 men. About 300 returned.

      Delete
  7. It's always nice when a walk is accompanied by stories. We might not know all the words or all the story facts but instinctively we can sense tales from long ago when other people walked there. Listen carefully and you might still hear the echoes of their conversations.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is probably part of what makes abandoned places so irresistible for me. I want to "discover" something that may not be visible at first glance.

      Delete