3. - Schlösser-Magazin

3.d)
Integrity and/or Authenticity
Integrity
The Schwetzingen summer residence of
Elector Carl Theodor is almost completely
preserved in the shape it was given during
the Elector’s rule, 1742-1799. This is true not
merely for the palace and garden but for the
urban setting as well (Venice Charter, Article
1). The palace estate, altered and extended
several times in the course of the previous
centuries, in its present shape appears as if
it had been frozen in time since the end of
the eighteenth-century. The ensemble made
up of the town, palace and garden thus
offers an extraordinary concentration of
cultural monuments from the 18th-century:
The inventory of buildings within the town
includes plain middle-class dwellings, inns, a
barracks, a stables and a slaughterhouse, all
of them necessary elements for a workable
summer residence. Technical monuments
such as the waterworks, high-ranking artistic
achievements like the bathhouse, but also
plain relics of everyday life in the 18thcentury
like park benches, the leather buckets
marked with the Elector’s monogram of “CT”,
kept in readiness in the palace theatre in case
of fire, a cast-iron heating stove, again marked
CT, for heating the orangery – all has been
preserved in uncommon variety.
Many of the buildings within the estate are
still being used according to their original
purpose, or recall the use they were created
for: stately as well as private suites of
rooms in the palace and the quarter-circle
pavilions, premises for musical and theatrical
performance (palace theatre, Natural
Theatre, the concert room in the southern
quarter-circle pavilion, the bathhouse), the
indispensable auxiliary buildings and working
quarters (orangery, guardhouses, waterworks)
and so on.
Another unique feature is the fact that on the
estate consisting of the palace and garden the
entire inventory of buildings and sculptures
3. Justification for Inscription
from the second half of the 18th-century
has survived. This is due entirely to Carl
Theodor’s removal to Munich in 1777 and the
acquisition of Schwetzingen by the House
of Baden soon after. The palace and gardens
were maintained, but they were spared major
alterations, redesigns and extensions (Venice
Charter, Art. 4-8). The summer residence
survived the massive social upheaval brought
about in the wake of the industrialisation, and
the two great wars, without suffering major
damage.
As the comparative analysis has shown, this
state of preservation of all buildings and
features necessary for an understanding of
the phenomenon of the summer residence has
become exceedingly rare.
Even during the 19th-century the ensemble
nominated for inscription already adhered
to the conditions and parameters for
conservation, maintenance and restoration set
down by the “Venice Charter”.
With its wealth of authentic features the
palace garden is a veritable handbook of
the art of gardening (both Baroque and
landscape gardens), a panorama of artistic
techniques (sandstone, marble, lead and
bronze sculpture), a typology of “fabriques”
(trellis structures, grottoes, temples, ruins,
monuments etc.), a collection of artistic
disciplines (architecture, gardening, sculpture,
painting, artisan crafts) and last but not least
a magnificent synthesis of 18th-century ideas
and themes (the sciences, the intellectual
universe of the Enlightenment, musical
culture, mythology, Christian mysticism etc.).
Authenticity
Besides the near-complete preservation of the
garden’s built substance, that of the vegetal
elements and compositions is remarkable
too – and ultimately due to the fact that at
Schwetzingen, conservation was an issue from
a very early stage. This considerate attitude
towards the garden was in evidence even
before its completion – for example, the plant
stock of the formal areas remained untouched
even when the layout was simplified. After
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