Wiesbaden

The two towers in front of you belong to St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden's Catholic parish church. They rise 68 metres and were finished in 1866, more than fifteen years after the church itself was consecrated. The architect was Philipp Hoffmann, a young Nassau building official who had already worked on the City Palace you will see later on this walk. The foundation stone was laid on 5 June 1845, the feast day of Saint Boniface, and Bishop Peter Josef Blum of Limburg consecrated the interior on 19 June 1849. The church faces south onto Luisenplatz, so the portal is on this side and the choir is at the north. Hoffmann mixed Gothic and Romanesque forms: the large windows end in round arches rather than pointed ones, and the openwork spires follow the model of Freiburg Minster. The square itself was laid out in 1830. On the east and west sides stand the former mint and the former Pädagogium, both now used by the Hessian Ministry of Education. This is already the second church on the site. Between 1829 and 1831 the Nassau court architect Friedrich Ludwig Schrumpf built a classical church here, with a portico and two towers, to match the new square. On 11 February 1831, shortly before it was finished, the building collapsed. The likely cause was a weak foundation on ground that had once been ponds outside the old town wall. After a pause, Hoffmann received the commission in 1843. A Catholic parish had only been re-established in Wiesbaden on 12 April 1800, long after the Reformation. The medieval parish church of St. Mauritius, which stood a few streets away, had become Lutheran. It burned in 1850, and the Marktkirche, our third stop, was built to replace it. Walk east along Friedrichstraße to Wilhelmstraße. On the corner, across from the Warmer Damm park, stands the classicist Erbprinzenpalais.

Wilhelmstraße is Wiesbaden's parade boulevard, laid out in 1810 by the city architect Christian Zais. Earlier plans for an avenue between the spa quarter and Friedrichstraße go back to 1806 and the Nassau building director Carl Florian Goetz. Since 1820 the street has carried the name of Duke Wilhelm I of Nassau-Weilburg, who ruled the duchy from 1816 to 1839. It runs from the spa crossroads at the northern end, where the Kurhaus stands, south to Rheinstraße, and forms the eastern edge of the Historic Pentagon, the old town. The pale classicist building on the corner is the Erbprinzenpalais, built by Zais between 1813 and 1817 for the Nassau hereditary prince. He never lived in it as duke. In 1816, at the age of 23, Wilhelm inherited the duchy after a sudden change in the succession, and he moved to Schloss Biebrich on the Rhine instead. The palais later housed libraries and museums, and since 1968 it has been the seat of the Wiesbaden Chamber of Industry and Commerce. It is the only one of Zais's three large classicist buildings in the city centre that still stands. His first Kurhaus was demolished in 1905 and replaced in 1907, and the hotel Vier Jahreszeiten was destroyed by a bomb in 1945. Look north along the street and you can already see the trees of the spa quarter. At the southern end, behind you, the Museum Reinhard Ernst opened in June 2024, in a building by the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. Walk a short way north along Wilhelmstraße, then turn left, west, toward the brick towers of the Marktkirche on Schlossplatz.

The red brick church in front of you is the Marktkirche, Wiesbaden's Protestant main church. Carl Boos designed it as a Nassau state cathedral and built it between 1853 and 1862. The foundation stone was laid on 22 September 1853; the church was consecrated on 13 November 1862. It was the first all-brick church in the Duchy of Nassau, and Boos took his cue from Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Friedrichswerder Church in Berlin. Five towers rise from the building. The west tower, the one facing the square, is about 88 metres high and is still described as the tallest building in Wiesbaden. The side towers are 58 metres, the choir towers 73 metres. An older figure of 98 metres, based on 300 feet, appears in some older accounts; the modern measurement is about 88 metres. The church stands here because its predecessor was lost. On 27 June 1850 the medieval Mauritiuskirche, then the Protestant main church, burned down. The duke gave this site on Schlossplatz but did not pay for the building. Boos first proposed a plastered stone church, then changed his plans on 25 February 1852 and argued for brick, which was unusual in this region. Critics disliked the material, the Gothic style and the height of the towers; Boos raised the towers still further. Inside, the nave is 50 metres long, 20 metres wide and 28 metres high. Five life-size marble figures of Christ and the Evangelists, given by Duke Adolph, have stood in the choir since 1863. The composer and organist Max Reger played the church organ here between 1890 and 1898. Cross the eastern side of Schlossplatz to the market fountain, a few dozen metres west, between the City Palace and the Old Town Hall.

Schlossplatz is the civic heart of Wiesbaden's old town. In front of you stands the Marktbrunnen, an octagonal fountain of red Main sandstone from 1753. A gilded Nassau lion crowns the shaft and holds a shield with Wiesbaden's arms, three golden lilies on a blue field. The lion was newly gilded in 2016. On the west side of the square is the Old Town Hall, the oldest building in the city, put up between 1608 and 1610 to plans by Valerius Bausendorff. It began as a Renaissance house with a solid ground floor and a richly carved timber upper storey. In 1828 the timber was replaced with stone. The building is now the city's registry office. The long, plain classicist palace on the north side is the Stadtschloss, built between 1837 and 1841 by Georg Moller for the dukes of Nassau. Duke Wilhelm I died in 1839 before it was finished. His son Adolph moved in in November 1841 and used it as a winter residence, spending the summers at Schloss Biebrich. On 4 March 1848 some 30,000 people gathered on this square with the "Nine Demands of the Nassauers", including a free press and the right of assembly. After Prussia annexed Nassau in 1866 the palace became a seasonal residence of the Prussian kings and, later, of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who often stayed here in May. Since 1 December 1946 it has been the seat of the Hessian Landtag, the state parliament. The building has been under renovation since 2018, and as of November 2026 you may still see scaffolding or a protective roof. The south side is the New Town Hall, built from 1884 to 1887 by Georg von Hauberrisser, the architect of Munich's New Town Hall. It was damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt in a simpler form, without its original main gable. Walk north-west from the square, along Langgasse or via Am Römertor, to the Roman wall and the gate over Coulinstraße, about a five-minute walk.

The stone wall beside you is the Heidenmauer, the oldest surviving structure in Wiesbaden. About 80 metres of it can still be seen above ground; archaeologists have traced it for some 520 metres in all, from the Schulberg down toward the Marktkirche. At the base it is 2.30 metres thick, and it stands up to 10 metres high. The name Heidenmauer, "pagans' wall", is recorded from the early sixteenth century. The Romans knew this place as Aquae Mattiacorum, the waters of the Mattiaci. The name appears on a milestone of the year 122, found in Mainz-Kastel. The wall itself is usually dated to around 370, in the reign of the emperor Valentinian I, but the evidence is mixed: a mortar sample has been carbon-dated to between 214 and 344, and some archaeologists argue for a date in the early third century. Its exact purpose is still debated. The gate over the street was added in 1903 by the city architect Felix Genzmer, after the wall was cut through in 1902 to build Coulinstraße. Genzmer designed a historicising gate with a timber walkway, drawing on Trajan's bridge over the Danube and on the then newly reconstructed Saalburg fort. Copies of Roman stone monuments found in Wiesbaden stand below the gate; the originals are in store and not on public display. Just to the east, on Langgasse, is the Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme, a working thermal bath built from 1910 to 1913 by the city inspector August O. Pauly. It is fed by the Adlerquelle, Wiesbaden's second-largest hot spring, at about 64.6 degrees Celsius. The tour stays outside; the baths are ticketed. Walk north-east to Kochbrunnenplatz, two or three minutes away, where Wiesbaden's hottest spring comes to the surface.

This is the Kochbrunnen, Wiesbaden's best-known and hottest thermal spring. Its name comes from the temperature of the water, which leaves the ground at over 66 degrees Celsius. It is a sodium chloride spring: the water tastes strongly of salt and has a faint smell of hydrogen sulphide. The red crust on the shell fountain is sinter, a mineral deposit. The city has measured its growth at about seven centimetres a year, and the fountain has to be cleaned so the crust does not swallow the basin. In Roman times this sinter was known as "Mattiacian balls" and was used to dye hair. The poet Martial mentions that use, and Pliny the Elder already wrote about Wiesbaden's hot springs. The spring is first recorded in 1366 as the Bryeborn, the scalding spring, and in 1536 as the Syedenborn, the boiling spring. It is artesian and rises from a depth of about 2,000 metres. Today it is captured in a borehole 43 metres deep. Only a small part of the water feeds the drinking point in the pavilion and the Kochbrunnenspringer in front of you, which was opened in December 1970. The rest is led to the treatment plant at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Therme and into the city's thermal network. The springs of Wiesbaden together yield about two million litres a day, at around 67 degrees, which the city counts among the hottest in Europe. Their age is estimated at least 200,000 years. The present pavilion was built in 1887 and 1888 as part of a grand drinking-cure hall, then moved and renewed in 1976 and 1977. If you taste the water at the pavilion, expect it very hot and very salty. Around this square stood some of the old spa hotels. The Hotel Rose, at the back of the square, has housed the Hessian State Chancellery since September 2004. The hotel Schwarzer Bock, nearby, traces its founding to 1486. Walk east along Taunusstraße, past the hotel Nassauer Hof, to the Bowling Green and the Kurhaus, about six minutes away.

The lawn in front of you is the Bowling Green, a name left by English spa guests. Two cascade fountains sit on the grass, and plane trees line the long sides. Under the lawn, since 2006, there is an underground car park. The present trees were planted after the old planes were taken down for that work, between 2004 and 2006. To your left, on the north side, runs the Kurhauskolonnade, 129 metres long, built in 1826 and 1827 by Heinrich Jacob Zengerle. It is often described as the longest colonnade in Europe. The "Kleine Spiel" of the Spielbank Wiesbaden, the slot-machine rooms, occupies part of it. To your right is the Theaterkolonnade, added in 1839 by Carl Faber and later joined to the State Theatre. The building that closes the view is the Kurhaus, opened in 1907. It replaced Christian Zais's first "Cursaal" of 1810, which was demolished in 1905. Friedrich von Thiersch designed the new house in a neoclassical style with Jugendstil details, at a cost of six million Goldmarks. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who came to Wiesbaden each May and had supported the project, called it at the opening "the most beautiful Kurhaus in the world." The west façade is 128 metres long. On the Ionic portico you can read the inscription AQUIS MATTIACIS, "dedicated to the waters of the Mattiaci", the Roman name for these springs. Behind the doors a foyer rises under a dome 21 metres high. The large concert hall is named after Thiersch, the smaller one after Zais. Since 1949 the casino's table games, the "Große Spiel", have occupied the former wine hall in the north wing. By 1840 Wiesbaden already counted some 20,000 spa guests a year; by 1910 the figure was around 200,000. The main entrance of the State Theatre is in the southern colonnade, only a few steps across the Green.

The Hessian State Theatre was built as a royal theatre for Kaiser Wilhelm II by the Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer. Construction took 22 months. The house opened on 16 October 1894; the cost was 1.8 million Goldmarks. The style is neo-baroque. A first court theatre had stood near the Nassauer Hof since 1827, but by the end of the century it was too small for the Kaiser's ideas of display. Wilhelm II had his own carriage entrance, the Kaiserfahrt: from Wilhelmstraße his coach ran through the basement straight to the imperial box. The entrance you use as a theatre-goer is here in the Theaterkolonnade. The show façade faces the other way, over the Warmer Damm. In 1902, again at the Kaiser's wish, the city architect Felix Genzmer added a foyer on the east side. In 1905 an inscription was placed in the south pediment, a line from Friedrich Schiller's poem "Die Künstler": "Der Menschheit Würde ist in Eure Hand gegeben. Bewahret sie!" — "The dignity of mankind is placed in your hands. Preserve it." The Schiller monument in the park, by Joseph Uphues, went up in the same year, on the hundredth anniversary of the poet's death. On the night of 2 to 3 February 1945 bombs hit the north side of the theatre, damaging the colonnade portico, the box-office hall and the auditorium ceiling. Those parts were rebuilt in a simpler form after the war. The house is a five-section state theatre, with opera, drama, ballet, concert and a studio stage. The largest auditorium, the Großes Haus, has 1,041 seats. Every May the theatre hosts the International May Festival, which has been held since 1896. Walk around the theatre to the south and into the Warmer Damm. Stand in the park so that you face the theatre's south portico and the Schiller monument.

The Warmer Damm is an English-style landscape park, laid out in 1859 and 1860 by the court garden director Carl Friedrich Thelemann. Its name is older than the park. It comes from a dam in the old town defences that held back the "Warmer Weiher", a pond where the outflows of the thermal springs collected. The pond was used as a horse-wash. It was filled in 1805, and in 1810 Wilhelmstraße was driven across the old water. The name later passed to this park, which was planned as an extension of the Kurpark. When the State Theatre was built in the 1890s, and again when car parks were added in the 1960s, the park lost about a quarter of its original area. The park as a whole is a listed historic garden. Early in the year the lawns and trees come into leaf sooner than in other parts of the city, warmed by the spring water in the ground. The pond and fountain in front of you have been here in their present form since 1988. A monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I, unveiled in 1894 in the presence of Wilhelm II, also stands in the park, as does the Schiller monument of 1905 beside the theatre's south portal. From this lawn you can look back at the theatre and, beyond the trees of Wilhelmstraße, toward the brick towers of the Marktkirche. The boulevard runs again along the west side of the park; across it stands the Erbprinzenpalais, where you paused near the start of the walk. The walk ends here. The Hauptbahnhof is about 1.5 kilometres south, a 20-minute walk down Wilhelmstraße and Bahnhofstraße. Buses also run from the theatre and the Kurhaus back to the station. If you have more time, the Kurpark continues behind the Kurhaus, with a concert shell and a larger pond.