Bruchsal Things to Do

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The Bürgerzentrum (citizens' centre), erected in the 1980's around the medieval castle keep, is the centre of the town's cultural life. The building complex unites the theater, the public library, the Volkshochschule (adult education centre), rooms for congresses, exhibitions and other events, the town archive, the tourist information, and restaurants.

Emergency hint: public toilets can be found inside the Bürgerzentrum but only when it is open. If not, the only chance are the toilets down at the far end of the parking garage.

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The small park behind the Bürgerzentrum offers the best views of the castle keep. It is a new park with some modern sculptures, a playground and some benches to rest - nothing special but a nice place to sit down if the feet are tired.

The small pond in the park is marked as "biotope", reeds and other water plants have been planted around it to create a home for insects and frogs and fish. As I noticed at my last visit, though, the biotope is not being taken care of and the creatures that feel happiest in it are algae. In other words, it is in urgent need of some measures to remove the algae, or it will soon turn into a dead muddy hole.

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Note the elaborate architectural details of the palace.

Photo 1: Chinese dragons serve as gargoyles on the roof of the Corps de logis.

Photo 2: A stucco detail on the facade above the main entrance

Photo 3: Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was painted above the entrance door of the Latin school.

Photo 4: Wall paintings on the Western facade of the chamber wing. Ancient mythology was popular even in clerical circles. Here we find Paris and Venus on the facade of a catholic bishop's palace.

Photo 5: The prince's crown on the roof above the gate between main and side wing, and another dragon-shaped gargoyle

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Bruchsal's town centre has mostly post-war architecture. Along the pedestrian malls you'll find a lot of shops that sell about everything and even a small, locally owned department store - the shopping is at a small-town level, though. You'll get what you need, but if you want a wider choice a trip to Karlsruhe, Heidelberg or (best) Mannheim is recommended.

Update 2011: Quite a bit has been done recently to improve the town centre. Since the completion of Rathausgalerie mall some new shops have settled in Stuttgart. The pedestrian zone has partly been redecorated with sculptures and fountains and looks much nicer than before. The small town department store closed down but a large fashion store has moved into the building. Bruchsal is still much smaller than the cities around but all in all the efforts to modernize the town are visible.

This is an automatic bell-ringing machine that was made around 1790 in Geneva, Switzerland, by a company called Ferdinand Adler and Sons.

The metal drum at the bottom had metal pins or knobs on it corresponding to the different bells. When you rotated the drum, the pins plucked wires which rang the different bells at different frequencies, so as to play a tune. The metal drum was in effect a data storage medium, serving the same purpose as the hard disks, CD-ROMs and USB sticks that we use today.

There doesn't seem to be an English word for this sort of machine, so we use either the German word Glockenspiel or the French word carillon.

This is not the oldest machine in the museum, it's just the oldest one I happened to take a picture of. The oldest machine on display was made 170 years earlier, around 1620.

Switzerland, by the way, turns out to have been an important center of the self-playing musical instrument in the eighteenth century. This is because they already had numerous skilled artisans who had been trained as clockmakers.

People who could make clocks evidently had little trouble adding a few extra gears to make them into self-playing instruments.

Many of these trained clockmakers lived in poor rural areas, so they were willing to work for low wages, thus keeping prices competitive.

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Starting in 1964 the palace decorations were carefully and elaborately restored, using traditional materials and techniques whenever possible.

As in the Semper Opera House in Dresden, the apparently marble pillars are not made of marble at all but of plaster that has been carefully painted to look like marble. Only very skilled artisans can do this, often using techniques that have been passed down from father to son for many generations.

Second photo: The palace staircase with restored and re-painted pillars.

Third photo: In the elaborately restored palace.

Fourth photo: Statue of a man as a pillar holding up the roof. (Isn't there some special name for this sort of statue??)

Update: Thanks to VT member german_eagle (Ingo) for his comment about the fourth photo: "Btw, that figure holding up the roof is remarkable. Usually they are female figures, called Karyatide. But a man?"

That comment provided me with a word to start searching for. After looking up the word Karyatide in a few places I found that it is usually spelled caryatid in English, and that a male figure which is used in place of a column to hold up a building is called an Atlas or Atlant (stress on the second syllable), after the mythological figure Atlas, who was forced to hold up the sky on his shoulders for ever and ever. In ancient Roman architecture this sort of male figure was called a telamon.

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Admission to this museum in Bruchsal Palace is included in the Palace admission price.
After looking around the Palace, we arrived at this museum, in time to catch one of the guided tours (These run 3 times per day) The museum contains 500 instruments and 6,000 Sound Media, and is one of the largest of its kind in the world!
Even so, I hadn't expected the tour to last so long, nearly 2 hours.
The tour was conducted in German. Although I didn't understand much of the guides spiel, I still found it very interesting. Bernd attempted to translate some of the information, but he admitted later that some of the information was very technical.

I have downloaded some videos of the various instruments, but for more in depth information of the exhibits, I'd recommend visiting Nemorinos Bruchsal page

The museum covers the 350 year history of self playing instruments. These include pianos, violins, organs, musical clocks, barrel organs, music boxes and mechanical figures.

Some of these can be operated by visitors (pic2) or the guide will demonstrate the various exhibits.

Hi-lights included the early 20th Century pub.(Pic1) This was donated to the museum by its last owner, and is completely authentic. It can be hired out for parties etc, with seating for 30-50 people. (Tel.0049(0)7251/7426-52 or e-mail ingrid.lamprecht@landesmuseum.de )

The Titanic's Organ - This 1912 Welte organ was commissioned for the luxurious ocean liner HMS Titanic. However, there was a delay in its constuction, which meant that it wasn't installed in time for the fatal maiden voyage.

I particularly enjoyed the Fairground organs or Carousels. I was intrigued by one that had some pretty ghoulish images of children - I thought that these were paintings from a childrens story, but I was told that the pictures were used to tell 'the news'(pic 3)

More light hearted was the organ that had a mechanical orchestra of soldiers-On closer inspection, these were females with moustaches.

The mechanical 'artist' was quite enchanting, with his expressive movements - I videoed this - please check it out.

I was pleased to see a Chinese musical jewellery box, which is very similar to one that I was given as a present in the 1960's from my Auntie, who lived in Hong Kong.

There is also a Silent Movie Theatre, where a playing piano accompanies one of the first moving pictures. We didn't get the chance to see a film, but the old movie posters of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy were quite interesting.

Tuesday - Sunday 10.00 - 17.00
Closed December 24, 25 and 31
Open January 1st at 13.00

Entrance Fee - Including Bruchsal Palace and City Museum
5 Euro Adults
2.50 Euro Children
12.50 Euros Families

Guided Tours
11.00/ 14.00/ 15.30 (about 1 hour)

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The 5 Euro admission fee gave me access to the Palace, The German Museum of Mechanical Musical instruments, and the Municipal museum, which are all housed in the one building. (Corps de Logis) It was raining when we arrived, so it was nice to find that there were free lockers and coat-hangers to deposit our wet coats, umbrellas and bags etc.
At the reception desk there were guidebooks and post cards for sale, but we were handed print outs of things to see around the Palace.



Bruchsal Palace is the only religious Baroque residence on the Upper Rhine.
Construction of The 3 winged palace began in 1720 by Prince Bishop Damian Hugo of Schönborn, who made it the residence of the Prince Bishops of Speyer (The Spires). It was a large complex of separate buildings. (intentionally designed this way, to prevent fire spreading) The main building (The Corps de Logis) was finally completed in the mid 1750's.
The ornate oval stairway was added between 1731-2, and was created by the architect Balthasar Neumann. Most of the internal fittings were added in the last phase of construction.
Johanes Zick (painter) and Johann Michael Feichtmayer (stucco artist) were responsible for much of the rococo decorations.

In 1802 the residential palace came into the possession of the state of Baden. It became the home of Margravine Amalie von Baden, until her death thirty years later. The palace remained empty and fell into decay.
It was later occupied by administrative and military personnel.
On 1st March 1945, the complex was severely damaged during a bombing raid.
A reconstruction project was planned soon after the end of WW2.

The palace is considered to be one of the greatest reconstruction efforts of the post-war decades today.

From 1964-1975, the outer shell was rebuilt to its original design

Renovation on the Out Houses -1976-81. The Palace Gardens were renovated between 1990-96
2008, work commenced on a re-creation of the State Rooms in the bel etage of the main building.

It was interesting to wander around, admiring the opulent decor and the high standard of reconstruction.

Not everything is as it seems though- The marble columns are in fact constructed from plaster, onto which a highly skilled team of artists painted the marble effect.

Part of the palace holds an exhibition of the Re-Construction programme, with photos depicting different stages of the work, and the craftsmen and women at work. Some original fragments are displayed too.

Open - Tuesday - Sunday 09.30-17.00
Monday-Public Holidays only

Hourly guided tours in German
(English and French if booked by telephone in advance)
Tours for Groups, booked in advance.

Admission Prices;
Adults 5 Euros
Children under 6 years and students 2.50 Euros
Family - 12.50 Euros
Groups of 20 4.50 Euros
Children under 6 Free

There is a cafe near the entrance gate.
Although I didn't see it, there is an Ice skating rink in the Palace grounds.