Lower East Garden (Unterer Ostgarten)
The Lower East Garden was built by Duke Friedrich II around 1800 in the style of an English landscape garden with countless Mediaeval romantic elements. A variety of individual features created a harmonious whole, with the key elements of the garden being the Ice Valley, the menagerie, Emichsburg castle perched on a high rock with Emichsee lake below and the former Großer See (large lake). The landscape is shaped by dark-leafed trees and groups of shrubs. Roses, rhododendrons, shrubs, ferns and grasses laid out in a natural style add touches of colour.
Tour through the Lower East Garden
Posilippo Tunnel
In 1801 when the redesign project was under way in the Upper East Garden, Duke Friedrich II decided to have a dam built to link the rear palace courtyard with the Upper East Garden, in place of a wooden bridge. Beneath it, a tunnel measuring around 30 m in length was built using roughly hewn stones, enabling access to the Lower East Garden without any steps. Having travelled through Italy with the Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia in 1782 and visited Naples, among other places, in Campania, the Duke was so impressed by an ancient tunnel through the foothills there that he had the gallery built in its image and also named it "Posilippo". From the Greek "Pausilypon", the name means "the place which stops all cares" and refers to a Roman villa there which once belonged to Augustus