Garden Mosque
Schwetzingen, Germany
Baden-Württemberg Castles and Gardens, State Agency for Property Assets and Construction
About State Castles and Gardens Baden-Württemberg, Schwetzingen
The mosque complex comprises a cloister-like colonnade in the east (1779–84) and a main building (1782–86) flanked by two minarets (1786–95) in the west
Nicolas de Pigage (1723–1796)
The mosque in the Schwetzingen palace gardens today is the last surviving example of a type of building quite common in European landscape gardens up to the end of the 18th-century.
The mosque, built 1782–95 by Nicolas de Pigage, was preceded by the Ambulatory, designed inside a Turkish Garden, which was first mentioned in 1774. Work on the actual mosque building started after Elector Carl Theodor had moved to Munich. The Ambulatory itself already represents contemporaneous ideas of what a mosque building looked like; the similarities with the feature of the holy sites of Mecca, published by Fischer von Erlach, are as unmistakable as the similarity of the corner pavilions with the mosque built by Chambers at Kew Gardens. The mosque itself is a fairly autonomous structure with a temple-like portico and Baroque dome.
The mosque is surrounded by a “Turkish garden” with winding paths and exotic plants. The architectural feature of the central building provides an original variation on the language of shapes found in baroque churches. Quotations from the western architectural history are combined with oriental motifs and inscriptions from the Qur'an. The minarets are positioned slightly in front of the western façade. The colonnade walkway with its rectangular layout is comprised of latticework open on all sides. The octagonal pavilions are decorated with dictums in Arabic and German. One striking feature is the refined roofscape with different basic slatecovered shapes, adorned by innumerable gilded crescents. The mosque’s interior is comprised of a round central hall, richly and colourfully decorated. Various general maxims are inscribed in Arabic and translated into German. These texts are not religious in nature, but generally invoke virtues, such as wisdom, diligence and discretion.
Hartmut Troll "Garden Mosque" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=monuments;AWE;de;7;en
Prepared by: Hartmut Troll
MWNF Working Number: DE 008
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