Rastatt: Baroque History, City Museum and Routes

Rastatt offers several distinct highlights for a stay: baroque residences and churches, a landscaped park, the city’s history at the museum, and walking and cycling routes. When looking for a hotel in Rastatt, you can first decide which of these themes you want to shape your trip. This helps you narrow down the destination based on specific interests.

Baroque Residences and Palace Park

Rastatt Palace, the palace of “Türkenlouis,” is the earliest baroque residence on the Upper Rhine. Favorite Palace offers a different perspective: a guided tour of the palace and its grounds reveals magnificent state rooms, Germany’s oldest mirrored room, and the world’s largest collection of Meissen porcelain from the early days of porcelain production.

The twelve-hectare park of Favorite Palace is in the Niederbühl-Förch district of Rastatt. Designed as an idyllic landscaped garden with exotic plants, the park is a place to go for a walk, jog, picnic, relax and take photographs. At Favorite, both the interiors and collections and the expansive garden are highlights.

Churches are also part of the city’s baroque heritage. Together with Favorite Palace, Rastatt Palace Church is the most important architectural testament to Margravine Sibylla Augusta (1675–1733). The Catholic Church of St. Alexander was consecrated in 1764 and is a baroque church that defines the cityscape. Those interested in architecture will find a range of examples, each with its own historical context.

City History at the Museum

The City Museum is housed in the so-called Vogelsche House, built around 1705 to plans by Domenico Egidio Rossi as a cavalier’s house. Today, it documents the city’s baroque founding period from the late 18th century to the present day. A permanent exhibition explores Rastatt’s 300-year history, while special exhibitions that change annually cover topics relating to the city’s history and culture.

One of the specific exhibits is a mammoth tusk found in a gravel pit lake. Together with the historic building and the exhibitions, it offers a way to explore the city’s history that ranges from the architecture of the house to a single archaeological find.

Historic Routes and Walks

The Historic Route takes you to 24 historic sites in about an hour and a half. The Revolution Trail, by contrast, is an approximately two-kilometre loop through Rastatt city centre. It leads to notable buildings and sites associated with the Baden Revolution, and is marked with ground arrows in Baden’s colours and information boards. The comparison helps you plan: the Historic Route specifies the approximate duration and number of sites, while the Revolution Trail gives its approximate length and historical theme.

If you would rather choose the route length yourself, the “Murgrunde” walking route starts in central Rastatt. Its length can be adjusted by taking different bridges. For another perspective on nature, the Salmon Discovery Trail introduces the diversity of life above and below water and explores the return of salmon since 2011. You can also hike in the Rastatt Rhine floodplains, which are protected areas. According to the city’s tourism website, they are among Europe’s last remaining large, intact floodplains.

Cycling Tours with Different Highlights

The 67-kilometre “Tour de Murg” cycling tour runs from Freudenstadt to Rastatt. The Great Floodplain Cycling Tour passes through the Rastatt floodplains and crosses into Alsace on the Saletio ferry. The Tour de Murg is defined by its distance and destination, while the floodplain tour is shaped by its route through the floodplains and its ferry crossing. This lets you take different cycling themes into account when planning your trip without treating the routes as interchangeable.

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Go to the main travel overview: Rastatt.