Qualla: Rastede Palace

Rastede Palace: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JoachimKohlerBremen, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1945, Canadian soldiers occupying Rastede pried open a sarcophagus in the crypt of St-Ulrichs-Kirche, looking for treasure. What they found was a woman, perfectly mummified, her hands still folded in prayer. Princess Sophie Eleonore of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck had been buried there in the mid-eighteenth century, two hundred years after spending forty quiet years at the dilapidated palace down the road. She had written from there to King Frederick IV of Denmark, thanking him for the small pension that kept her alive and asking, again and again, for funds to fix the roof. The roof was eventually fixed by other people. The palace is now lived in by Christian, Duke of Oldenburg, twelve kilometres north of the city his family used to rule.

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Image: JoachimKohlerBremen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rastede Palace: Founded by a Count Named Huno

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JoachimKohler-HB, CC BY-SA 4.0. The monastery came first. In 1091, a count named Huno and his wife Willna founded a Benedictine house at Rastede in honour of the Virgin Mary, and their son Friedrich finished the building. The monastery church was consecrated five years later. In the twelfth century, the positio...

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Image: JoachimKohler-HB | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rastede Palace: From Hunting Lodge to Danish Indifference

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JoachimKohlerBremen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Count Anthony Günther of Oldenburg, who reigned during the chaos of the Thirty Years' War, built large new stables at Rastede in 1612. The former monastery was demolished in 1643 and replaced by a hunting lodge that doubled as a summer residence. When Anthony Günther died in 1667...

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Image: JoachimKohlerBremen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rastede Palace: A Dutch Architect and a Returning Duke

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norbert Nagel, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1750 the Danish governor sold the palace to a judge named Christoph Römer, who hired the Dutch architect Cornelis Redelykheid to rebuild the place. Redelykheid worked from a Dutch model and produced a three-wing Baroque palace with a French formal garden out front. Twenty-seve...

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Image: Norbert Nagel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rastede Palace: The Last Grand Duke's Retreat

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steffen Schmitz (more photos), CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1894, Rastede had been remodelled again, the north wing redone under Carl Heinrich Slevogt and Otto Lasius, the attic raised, the hall covered in stucco by the sculptor Eduard Demitrius Högl. Across the country road the Erbprinzenpalais, the Lodge of the Hereditary Prince, was...

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Image: Steffen Schmitz (more photos) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rastede Palace: What You Can Actually Visit

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steffen Schmitz (more photos), CC BY-SA 4.0. The palace itself is closed to visitors, a private home for a family whose ancestors first laid the stones nine hundred years ago. The park is another matter entirely. Bosse's Schlosspark stretches around the building in the English landscape style he learned in the late eighteen...

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Image: Steffen Schmitz (more photos) | CC BY-SA 4.0