Mathildenhöhe

Joseph Maria Olbrich designed this tower for the third exhibition of the artists’ colony, in 1908. The city gave it as a wedding present to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig and Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, who had married on 2 February 1905. It is about 48 metres high. The five rounded forms at the top are often compared to the fingers of an open hand, which is why people also call it the Fünffingerturm. Since 1993 it has been a branch of the city’s registry office, so on wedding days the way up can be closed. When it is open, there is a lift and a viewing platform. The tower stands with the Exhibition Hall on the old water reservoir at the top of the hill. In July 2021 UNESCO inscribed the Mathildenhöhe, including this tower, on the World Heritage list. You can see the next stop from here: the Exhibition Hall is a few metres to the side.

Olbrich designed the Ausstellungsgebäude at the same time as the tower, for the Hessian State Exhibition of 1908. It stands on the site of the city’s high-level water reservoir, built between 1877 and 1880. The Institut Mathildenhöhe, the city institution that looks after this hall, the Museum Künstlerkolonie and the municipal art collection, is based here. The hall was damaged in the air raid of the night of 11–12 September 1944 and later repaired. After the war it hosted the exhibition Mensch und Raum in 1951, part of the Darmstädter Gespräch. Today it is used for temporary shows. The grounds around it are free to walk; tickets are needed for exhibitions inside.

Olbrich designed this house as the shared studio and meeting place of the artists’ colony for the first exhibition, in 1901. Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig had established the colony in 1897. The city bought the house in 1951 and turned it to cultural use. The Museum Künstlerkolonie is here now, with work from the colony years. Look at the entrance from the path: a wide arched portal with a large figurative relief. You stay on the path in front; the museum has its own hours and tickets. Several of the artists also lived in houses just along this hillside, which is where the walk goes next.

This was Joseph Maria Olbrich’s own house, built for the 1901 exhibition. He came from the Vienna Secession and was the lead architect of that first show. You stay on the public path; it is a private house. In the air raid of September 1944 the building was damaged, like several of the 1901 houses. What you see from the street is a later repair, not the house exactly as Olbrich left it. Even so, the position still shows how the colony was planned: studios and family houses set in the hillside garden, close to the shared Ernst-Ludwig-Haus you just left.

Olbrich also designed the Großes Glückert-Haus, at Alexandraweg 23, for the furniture maker Julius Glückert, again for the 1901 exhibition. At weekends the city’s information point for the World Heritage site is here. The house is one of the artists’ and patrons’ houses in the property inscribed in 2021. Look at the street front from the pavement; do not go into private parts of the building. From here the path turns back toward the chapel and the plane-tree grove.

The Church of St. Maria Magdalena is older than the artists’ colony around it. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia commissioned it between 1897 and 1899; the architect was Louis Benois of St Petersburg. Nicholas had married Princess Alix of Hesse, the youngest sister of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, in 1894. The chapel was consecrated in 1899 and is still the church of the Russian Orthodox parish in Darmstadt. The five gilded onion domes are easy to pick out from the hillside. Stay on Nikolaiweg and the paths around the building; going inside is only possible at the parish’s visiting hours, and you should not interrupt a service. Beside the chapel is the Lilienbecken, the lily basin, added later by Albin Müller.

The plane-tree grove is older than the colony. It was laid out in the 1830s, in the park that later took its name from Grand Duchess Mathilde. For the exhibition of 1914, the sculptor Bernhard Hoetger added figures and reliefs that follow a cycle of life. The trees are planted in regular rows and make a room in the open air. You can walk through freely; there is no ticket. A tactile model of the Wedding Tower stands near the steps. The grove, the tower and the chapel form the skyline that the city calls its crown, the Stadtkrone. From here the last stretch leaves the World Heritage hill and goes east, about 1.3 kilometres, into the park of the Rosenhöhe.

The Rosenhöhe is a separate park, just east of the Mathildenhöhe, with a rosarium, older court buildings and the grand-ducal mausoleums. The two hills are neighbours, but they do not belong to the same World Heritage property. At the approach you may see stone lions that once belonged to an exhibition gateway on the Mathildenhöhe. The rosarium is open as a public garden. This is the end of the walk. You can go back to the Hochzeitsturm the way you came, or walk down into the city toward the Residenzschloss and Luisenplatz, where a second walk through the old town begins.