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The Schloss Schwetzingen began as a simple aristocratic fishing retreat (as Versailles began as a hunting retreat) and had an eventful architectural history, in several building campaigns, especially during the reigns of the Electors Palatine Karl III Philip (1716-1742) and Karl IV Theodor (1742-1799) who embellished their answer to Versailles with some of the finest and most elaborate formal water parterres in German gardens.
As it evolved, the high central Baroque block of the Schloss was extended to either side (from 1747 onwards) in matching curved ranges of glazed arcades that were punctuated by pavilions following the arc of the vast garden circle. They partly enclose the circle bisected by a wide gravel axis flanked by parterres which centers on a spring-fed water-basin inspired by the bassin of Diana at Versailles, but here expressing the more appropriately watery Greek myth of the poet Arion and the dolphins.
On the other, entrance side, a mulberry-tree allée stretched from the center of the Schloss to the city of Heidelberg, 10km away on the horizon, truly a remarkable feat of autocratic landscaping.
The curving outbuildings of Schwetzingen inspired the smaller Rococo perfections of Schloss Benrath, with its quarter arcs of matching corps de logis embracing a formal sheet of water, built for Carl Theodor near Düsseldorf, 1756 - 1770.
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