The Foundation: Modern Culture in a Baroque Palace
Schloss Engers is one of the most beautiful and spectacular sights in the Rhine Valley, an original Palace from the splendid Baroque period, in which Germany was a country of rich princes, bishops and counts. Johann Philipp von Walderdorff, the founder of Schloss Engers, was all of that: Count of Walderdorff, Archbishop and Elector of Trier, and in these functions one of the most important German princes of the 18th century.
According to his social rank, he ordered a new palace directly at the riverside of the Rhine not far from his residential town of Koblenz. The Palace was to be built as an up-to-date “Palais” in the French style, combining rich interior design with stucco and wooden ornaments, spectacular frescos, and impressive facades in both directions, facing the Rhine and the woods. The latter were to be the Archbishop’s hunting district, fore it was his intention to use Schloss Engers mostly as a hunting palace. Therefore, the antique Roman Goddess of Hunting, Diana, is the symbolic ruler of the place.
After the end of the 18th century, Engers has never been used as a residential palace again, but served several functions: it was turned into a Military school and finally into a Hospital. Nowadays, it contains the famous Academy for Chamber Music of Villa Musica, a state foundation of the German Bundesland Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate). Highly gifted young musicians from all over the world are given a special education in the art of European Classical Chamber Music, here. Music Professors from several European countries are responsible for the rehearsals as well as for the concerts, which can be attended in the wonderful “Hall of Diana”, the central Baroque hall of the palace. Many of the programmes are broadcast in the radio, so that Schloss Engers nowadays is a synonym for excellent Classical Music all over Germany.
Besides the musicians and their audience, many different kinds of groups and persons are most welcome in Schloss Engers. It is a renowned meeting place for industrial companies and their seminars, it is a place for private and public celebrations. Its excellent restaurant offers local meals, accompanied by the excellent wines from the Mosel and Rhine valleys, which belong to the most famous in Germany. Festivals like the Open Air Concerts each summer or the huge “Barockfest” in historical costume are attractions for the whole region.