Kassel; Saturday, 13 December, 2025

After breakfast I headed out of the hotel and over the nearby Drahtbrücke to reach the Park Karlsaue, the large park that was once part of a larger palace complex, of which only the park and the Orangery now survive. The Orangery itself is now the largest planetarium in the state and is the starting point for a long walk through the gardens that set out the solar system in scale from a large sun in the centre of the Schloß Orangerie through the park passing panels for the different planets at appropriate intervals, albeit the park only contains the solar system up until Jupiter, with Neptune being over 9Km from the Schloß

I didn’t follow the whole route as I only reached Jupiter by the end of the park and the rather nice café that was sitting next to the, sadly closed for the winter, formal gardens. I popped in for a hot chocolate to warm up from the slightly biting wind that was blowing through the gardens before setting off for a walk through more parkland before reaching the city’s Botanical Gardens.

Attached to the university the gardens are a practical space for students as well as an interesting set of gardens to walk around, though in mid-December most of the plants were either in the off-limits green houses or had died back for the year. Even the Cacti house wasn’t available as that was in the process of being refurbished and rebuilt so there really wasn’t that much to see.

I then walked back over towards the Weinberg to have a look around the terrace gardens which were, according to Google, open all day. Turns out Google had it wrong and much like many of the other attractions in the city they’re closed between the end of November and the start of March, so that was another missed site.

Rather than trudging any further I hopped on a tram and took that round to the Stadtmuseum in the centre of town, which was partially open with it’s galleries on the early development of the city and the city through to the 19th century open to look around, but works on their modern history gallery meant that was closed.

From the Stadtmuseum it was a short walk down to the Landesmuseum so from City to State in a few minutes’ walk. The Landesmuseum houses a large collection of historical artefacts from the very earliest human settlement in the region through till the modern day, but with almost nothing in the period 1913-1948 – its almost as if the city is hiding something (at least two concentration camps, several Nazi rallies and the main armed forces recruiting centre for the region.)

From the Landesmuseum it was a short walk over to Grimmwelt, a modern museum located on the top of the Weinberg and dedicated to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm who had been working on the first Dictionary of German, but in the process had built up a collection of local fairy and folk tales that they eventually wrote down and published creating the modern tellings of most of the famous tales, albeit with a bit more blood and gore that Disney helped to remove in the 20th Century.

With Grimmwelt closing I headed back into the city centre and spent quite a bit of time at the Christmas Markets both having dinner and picking up some final items of Christmas shopping before I headed back to the hotel and the welcoming embrace of my bed.