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Castle (Landgrafenschloss)

The building that preceded today's Landgrave palace was a fortress built in the Middle Ages, probably around 1180 by the Lords of Hohenberg. Around 1200, it was acquired by the Lords of Eppstein, whose knights ministeriales – the Brendels of Homburg – originally took the simple location and expanded it into an impressive stone structure. The Eppsteins sold Homburg, and in 1504, it went to the Landgraviate of Hesse, in 1584 to Hessen-Darmstadt and subsequently in 1622 to Friedrich, who later became the first Landgrave of Hessen-Homburg. His son, Landgrave Friedrich II, had master builder Paul Andrich replace the fortress with a Baroque palace from 1678 to 1686. The “Weißer Turm” (White Tower), the former castle keep of the Brendelburg in the upper palace courtyard, and the Palaskeller palace cellar are the last relics of the old structure. Remains of later fortress structures and fragments of fortifications from the fortress, which was expanded and renovated in phases in early modern times, left their marks on the structure of the new palace. Early on, the new building suffered from a lack of funds, and generous renovation plans drawn up by architect Louis Remy de la Fosse in the 1720s were not carried out. The generous appanage of the English Landgrave Lady Elizabeth, the wife of Landgrave Friedrich VI, made possible extensive modifications, which were planned and carried out by master builder Georg Moller from Darmstadt beginning in 1820 with construction lasting around 20 years; this included the late-classicistic “English Wing” of the 1820s and the „King's Wing“ redesigned in 1830s. After 1866, the latter was gradually converted into large apartments when the palace became the summer residence of the Prussian kings and later the German Emperor.