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Friedenstein Palace

Castles in ThuringiaHouse of Saxe-Coburg and GothaHouse of Saxe-Gotha-AltenburgMuseums in ThuringiaRoyal residences in Germany
Schloss Friedenstein01
Schloss Friedenstein01

Friedenstein Palace (German: Schloss Friedenstein) is an early Baroque palace built in the mid-17th century by Ernest I, Duke of Saxe-Gotha at Gotha, Thuringia, Germany. In Germany, Friedenstein was one of the largest palaces of its time and one of the first Baroque palaces ever built. Friedenstein served as the main seat of the Dukes of Saxe-Gotha and later as one of the residences of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, closely linked with the royal family of Great Britain through the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The final two ruling Dukes were both princes of the United Kingdom. The palace complex today houses several museums. It is also notable for hosting the Ekhof-Theater, one of the oldest theatres in operation in Germany, still featuring the original Baroque machinery for changing the scenery.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Friedenstein Palace (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Friedenstein Palace
Elsa-Brändström-Weg,

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Latitude Longitude
N 50.945833 ° E 10.704444 °
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Schlosskirche

Elsa-Brändström-Weg
99867 , Gotha Nord
Thuringia, Germany
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Schloss Friedenstein01
Schloss Friedenstein01
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Museum of Nature Gotha
Museum of Nature Gotha

The Museum of Nature Gotha (German - Museum der Natur Gotha) is a museum in the German city of Gotha. Since 2004 it has been one of four museums run by the Schloss Friedenstein Foundation Gotha (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha), named after the Schloss Friedenstein in the city. Particularly notable are the 1952-1954 hunting and animal-scene diorama backgrounds created by Friedrich Reimann, who also designed the murals in the entrance hall and stairwell. Its collections cover geology, palaeontology and zoology and were begun in the 17th century by the Dukes of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. When they and the ducal art collections outgrew the Schloss, Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha built a new Ducal Museum for the paintings, antiquities, plaster casts and the nature cabinet between 1864 and 1879. After much of the art collections were looted by the Soviets in 1945, the natural science collections were moved into the Ducal Museum and remained there after most of the art returned in 1956, being expanded by the addition of the Naturkundliche Heimatmuseum's collections. After being remodelled, the former Ducal Museum building reopened on 1 August 1954 as the Biologische Zentralmuseum (Central Biological Museum). Thuringia's largest natural history museum, it was later renamed the Naturkundemuseum (Natural History Museum) before taking on its present name in 1971. The natural history, geology and palaeontology collections returned to the Schloss in 2010, where they still reside.

Gotha
Gotha

Gotha (German: [ˈɡoːtaː]) is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Erfurt and 25 km (16 miles) east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine Wettins from 1640 until the end of monarchy in Germany in 1918. The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha originating here spawned many European rulers, including the royal houses of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal (until 1910) and Bulgaria (until 1946). In the Middle Ages, Gotha was a rich trading town on the trade route Via Regia and between 1650 and 1850, Gotha saw a cultural heyday as a centre of sciences and arts, fostered by the dukes of Saxe-Gotha. The first duke, Ernest the Pious, was famous for his wise rule. In the 18th century, the Almanach de Gotha was first published in the city. The publisher Justus Perthes and the encyclopedist Joseph Meyer made Gotha a leading centre of German publishing around 1800. In the early 19th century, Gotha was a birthplace of the German insurance business. The SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875 by merging two predecessors. In that period Gotha became an industrial centre, with companies such as the Gothaer Waggonfabrik, a producer of trams and later aeroplanes. The main sights of Gotha are the early-modern Friedenstein Castle, one of the largest Renaissance Baroque castles in Germany, the medieval city centre and the Gründerzeit buildings of 19th-century commercial boom. Gotha lies in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin in a flat and agricultural landscape.