Private Retreat The Princess' House

The house was built around 1789 according to plans by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff and served as Princess Louise's personal retreat.

The building originally extended over five window axes until a neo-Gothic gallery was added in 1804. This served as a way for the Princess to walk to the church when it was raining, as well as to exercise when the weather was bad. After her death in 1811, the house passed to the respective hereditary Prince and served as a summer residence until 1918. It was then used as a residence for employees of the Joachim Ernst Foundation, including the former garden director Hans Hallervorden.

The house is part of the neo-Gothic churchyard not far from Schloss Wörlitz and is therefore an important part of both the Wörlitzer Park and the UNESCO World Heritage Gartenreich. On the site of the old Wörlitz cemetery, Prince Franz created something significant: with the kitchen building, the stables, the Princess's house and the town church of St. Petri, one of the first urban areas in Germany was designed here in the neo-Gothic architectural style. It is not the Princess's house alone, but the interaction of all four buildings that clearly shows us that the German Neo-Gothic style first blossomed in Wörlitz.

As an exhibition center, the Princess' house now offers space for special exhibitions all year round. Between the individual shows, the permanent exhibition “A whole State as a Garden” provides information about the Gartenreich of the 18th century and thus the world of the royal couple Leopold III. Friedrich Franz and Louise of Anhalt-Dessau.
Bilingual audio tours, which are aimed equally at adults and children, and an accompanying booklet, which is also bilingual, provide all the necessary information about the exhibits.