EPOCHS WORTH SEEING IN THE TOWN OF KIRCHHEIMBOLANDEN

“A small, well-built town of around “300 houses” – this is how the Berlin grammar school director Anton Friedrich Büsching described “Kirchheim-Poland”. That was in 1790, when the “Old Empire” still existed with its more than 300 individual territories, including the Principality of Nassau-Weilburg, whose residence the town had become in the 1730s. In the building boom that followed, numerous prestigious new buildings were erected: the palace, palace church, ballroom and orangery, to name but a few. In addition, the previously medieval “old town” was “modernized” in the Baroque style and extended by “suburbs”. Nevertheless, part of the defensive walls built in the late 14th century have been preserved.

But then it was all over in 1792: French revolutionary troops occupied the Palatinate and destroyed everything reminiscent of the princely era – including in Kirchheimbolanden. However, the baroque townscape remained intact.

In 1816, the political map changed again. Now the Palatinate became Bavarian and Kirchheimbolanden became a district town. This required new administrative buildings, which triggered a further building boom. As a result, the 19th century is still very much present in the townscape.