Germany Guide
Hesse
Karlsaue
From the documenta-Halle, steps lead down to the Karlsaue, an eighteenth-century park on a vast scale, whose groomed lawns and well-drilled trees and water features stretch into the distance from the elegant, yellow-painted Orangerie, built in the early eighteenth century as a summer residence for Landgrave Karl and now home to the Astronomisch-Physikalisches Kabinett (Tues– Sun 10am–5pm; €3), whose collection of clocks, globes and scientific instruments from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is fascinating and beautiful. Pride of the collection is the Augsburger Prunkuhr, a staggeringly opulent clock built in Augsburg in 1683. A side pavilion houses the Marmorbad (Tues– Sun 10am–5pm; €4 with English audio guide), which contains sinuous mythological sculptures in Carrara marble by Pierre Etienne Monnot (1657–1733). At the southern end of the park is the Insel Siebenbergen (Easter to early Oct Tues– Sun 10am–7pm; €3), renowned for its flowering plants.