Visiting our own Bad Homburg Castle and Churches

Bad Homburg is the town with the new apartments where all of our Area Missionaries are moving. It’s a lovely town that spreads out in different areas. This morning we had a Offenbach Branch Temple Trip, so we decided to stay local for the rest of our day and visit nearby Bad Homburg.

We really enjoyed learning more about the history of this place, which was a pretty important place in its day. Bad Homburg was a favorite of the landgraves and the last monarchy of Germany.

There is a castle in the heart of the town, with a park and 2 old churches nearby. We took 3 different tours, 2 in different wings of the castle and one in the tower. The castle is still furnished as it was in the late 1800s when the last landgraves lived in it. There was great grandpa Frederick, then his son Wilhelm I, then Wilhelm II, who lived here. If I’m remembering, he had about 5 sons, none had a son, so it went to someone else like a cousin. He had no children, so the family kingdom monarchy ENDED. That was about the time WWI began, or around 1918.

There are beautiful gardens around the castle.

Here is the entrance. There were several bridal parties here today taking photos.

At the castle, there is a free museum area that has some fascinating history displayed.

This is a nice, precise summary of the history here:

The wonderful thing about this castle is that it looks today as it did then. Most of the furnishings you see here are original to this castle.

Here’s where we started the first tour of the imperial apartments:

Hallways lined the inner side of the wings with the rooms on the outer sides.

This English Wing houses the widow’s apartment of the English Princess and Landgravine Elizabeth of Hesse-Homburg (1770-1840) with elegant furniture and classicist interior design from the first quarter of the 19th century.

The details, oh the details!!

Elizabeth (“Eliza”), wife of one of the landgraves, lived in this wing and she did the handwork/embroidery on this tablecloth. She also was an artist and painted many of the pictures on the walls.

This was her bedroom with one of the first flush toilets in the region.

Now we are in the husband’s wing. A special saddle chair:

Early style of flushing toilet:

They would change their clothes several times a day for different events, meals and occasions. This is the changing room.

Depiction of Noah’s Ark:

They also had one of the first telephones in the region.

The last public address of Emperor Wilhelm II was made here from this balcony.

The 3rd part of our tour took us into this library in another wing of the castle.

This is Frederick, the first of the Emperors here.

Restoring a large picture frame:

These are the royals who lived here, generations of family members.

Because of journals, we know what happened here. One of the journals discovered was written by a servant.

Elisabeth’s art supplies and paints–she also painted the china.

The last tour we took was of the White Tower. We were given a skeleton key and told to lock the door behind us when we went in, then return the key after we came back down.