Germany Guide
Lower Saxony
The Grosser Garten
Address: Herrenhäuser Allee Opening time: Daily: April– Oct 9am–7/8pm; Nov– March 9am–5pmPrice: Summer €3 or €4 combined ticket with Berggarten, free Nov– March 
www.herrenhaeuser-gaerten.de
Hannover's original garden is the beautiful Baroque Grosser Garten, beyond the Georgengarten. Fired with inspiration after a visit to Versailles and aided by French master-gardener Martin Charbonnier, Electress Sophie, the consort of Ernst August, hailed by Leibniz as the greatest female mind of her age, transformed the kitchen garden of the royal summer palace into a horticultural masterpiece. "The Herrenhäuser garden is my life," she admitted, with good reason since the royals' open-air ballroom was thirty years in the making, finally complete in 1710. But what a stage: a precision-planted paean to the Age of Reason, surrounded by a moat that was plied by Venetian gondolas. At the northern end, an orangerie and frescoed festival hall are a relic of the palace flattened by Allied bombs. The heart of the garden beyond is the formal Grosse Parterre, with pouting allegorical statues among the neat box hedge – the Cascade viewing platform provides an elevated view. Its grotto (9am–4pm; €2 in winter) received a shot of cultural adrenaline for EXPO2000 from Niki de Saint-Phalle, she of the Nanas, who inlaid Gaudí-esque ribbons of mosaic in rooms themed as Spirituality, Day and Life, and Night and the Cosmos.
In summer Shakespeare and Molière are still staged in the Gartentheater east, a splendid piece of decadence whose troupe of nude statues surrounding the stage scandalized the odd foreign dignitary. West of the Grosse Parterre is a maze, and beyond it is a horticultural history-book of styles from Baroque to Rococo, Dutch to Low German, in plantings of fleur de lys, crescents and knots. Further down, as a centrepiece to neat beech wedges which radiate from fountains to corner temples, is the Grosse Fontäne ("Wasserkunst" fountain displays April– Sept 11am– noon & Mon– Fri 3–5pm, Sat & Sun 2–5pm). Sophia tasked the greatest engineering minds, Leibniz included, with the problem of how to power a fountain to rival the Sun King's. The pump was cracked by English know-how; in 1720 a plume of water spurted 36m high and Europe marvelled. The weight attached to this symbol of prestige has not decreased – the pump now has oomph to fling a jet 80m and the city continues to boast of having the highest fountain of any garden in Europe.