3. - Schlösser-Magazin

3. 3.b)
40
3. Justification for Inscription
Proposed Statement of
Outstanding Universal Value
The town, palace and gardens of Schwetzingen
together constitute the most authentically
preserved example of an eighteenth-century
stately summer residence in existence today.
All the relevant buildings and features are
preserved, which comparison with other
properties shows to be exceedingly rare.
Courtly life found a unique manifestation at
Schwetzingen in the domain of music. The
programmatic connection between the opera
repertory performed there and the spirit of
the Enlightenment that was cultivated at the
summer residence was found nowhere else in
Europe. Courtly musical culture as practiced
at Schwetzingen served as a trailblazer for
German reform opera and is represented by the
numerous performing sites in the palace and
garden.
The multifaceted interplay of garden art,
architecture and sculpture renders the
Schwetzingen palace garden one of the most
outstanding garden creations in Europe,
and the very small amount of redesigning
resulted in a perfect synthesis of the two great
gardening styles of the 18th-century.
Schwetzingen is unique in that the entire
inventory of buildings and sculptures from
the second half of the 18th-century has been
preserved. It includes unique properties such as
the earliest surviving balcony theatre, the last
18th-century garden mosque still in existence,
and the exquisite bathhouse compound. With
the circular parterre and the meadow vale,
outstanding artistic creations of the Baroque
and the landscape garden eras have been
preserved. The world of the 18th-century comes
to life in the technical monuments of the two
waterworks and the relics of everyday life
preserved in the palace garden.
Besides this uncommon concentration of
original elements the visitor to Schwetzingen
will experience the ongoing efforts to preserve
and continue to preserve the garden in its
historic dimension by expert maintenance,
and in this way to provide insights into the
gardening of the 18th-century. The foundations
were laid by the patron himself, who
declared his palace and garden a “Palatinate
monument” and initiated preservation
strategies that anticipate modern approaches
towards monument protection, and who had,
even earlier than that, set another precedent
for German monument protection in his
systematic cataloguing and study of smaller
monuments.