Darmstadt Mathildenhoehe

UNESCO World Heritage Site: Mathildenhoehe Darmstadt (2021); The Artists' Colony Founded 1899, With Olbrich'S Wedding Tower And Exhibition Hall And The Houses The Colonists Built For Themselves As A Built Manifesto Of Art Nouveau · Darmstadt, Hesse

Mathildenhoehe is a hill on the east side of Darmstadt where, from 1899, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse paid a group of artists to live, build and design together, and in 1901 they opened their own houses as an exhibition called A Document of German Art. That is the unusual part: they did not display drawings of architecture, they built the architecture and then let the public walk round it. What stands today is Joseph Maria Olbrich's Wedding Tower of 1908, with the five rounded gables that became the city's emblem, the Exhibition Hall beside it, several colony houses, the Russian chapel built for the Tsar whose wife was a Hessian princess, and a plane-tree grove with Bernhard Hoetger's reliefs. It became a World Heritage Site in 2021. It is a specialist place: half a day, much of it looked at from the pavement, twenty minutes from Frankfurt by train. If you care about Art Nouveau and design it rewards you, and if you do not it will bore you.

Mathildenhoehe, on the hill east of central Darmstadt, south of Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany

The hill itself is public street and park, open at any hour and free, which means the tower, the Exhibition Hall, the chapel and the grove can always be seen from outside. The Artists' Colony Museum and the Wedding Tower platform keep museum hours and are generally closed Mondays, as most German museums are, with last admission before closing. The Exhibition Hall opens only for its current show and shuts between exhibitions. The Russian chapel keeps short and irregular hours set by its parish. Winter hours are shorter. Confirm current days, prices and which buildings are open, because restoration closures here have run for years at a time.

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