Kurpark (Baden)
The Kurpark is a park in Baden in the canton of Aargau , which is laid out in the style of an English landscape garden. It was created in the 1870s to promote tourism in Baden's thermal baths .
investment
The park is located north of the city center on the edge of the Haselfeld plain. It is around 240 m × 150 m in size and is separated from the historic spa district to the northeast by an embankment . The southern half of the park is dominated by the Kursaal , built in 1875 , which today houses the Grand Casino Baden. In the north-western corner of the park is the Baden Kurtheater , built in 1952, and the Baden Synagogue opposite the south-western corner .
There is a small pond between the Kursaal and the Kurtheater. The original horticultural design of the park is only partially available, but the tree population is of national importance due to its biodiversity. The species present here include u. a. Copper beech , ginkgo , Lawson's false cypress , giant tree of life , giant sequoia , fern-leaved red beech and black walnut .
history
In 1865 the hotel operators of the spa district merged to form the spa association. Its aim was to build a "conversation building" with which the cultural needs of the spa guests could be satisfied. A year later, the Kurverein asked the renowned architect Gottfried Semper for an expert opinion. However, he immediately presented a detailed construction project including a design plan for the spa gardens and applied directly for the contract. Semper also suggested building a zoo with aviaries and a botanical garden. His cost estimates went far beyond the financial expectations of the Kurverein. In 1871 he carried out a competition that Robert Moser won. The area intended for the park had previously been used for agriculture and had been the site of the Roman settlement Aquae Helveticae over a millennium and a half earlier . During the construction and redesign work that began in 1872, Roman artifacts were repeatedly encountered , but they were not handled properly.
In 1875 the Kursaal and Park were completed. When designing the park, Moser largely followed Semper's ideas, and he also took advice from the Zurich city gardener Rudolf Blattner. Characteristic features were a symmetrical and dense network of paths, a generously laid out gravel area and a riding arena . The appearance of the park at that time had little in common with today; for example, the beds with exotic plants later gave way to a simple lawn. In 1881 the local community , which had replaced the bankrupt Kurverein as the owner of the park, decided to build a simple theater building. As a result, the architects Otto Dorer and Adolf Füchslin built a home style building made of bricks and frame work in the northern part of the park . In 1951 the increasingly dilapidated building was torn down and replaced in the following year by today's Kurtheater Baden , designed by Lisbeth Sachs .
Over the decades, the Kursaal and Park fulfilled their intended purpose and served as the social focal point for visitors to the thermal baths. In the gloss collection Kurgast published in 1925, Hermann Hesse wrote the following about the spa gardens:
"The spa guests crept everywhere, sat tired and bent a little on green-painted benches, limped past in groups, chatting [...] Oh, those sticks that one found everywhere here, these damn serious hospital sticks, which run out into widened rubber clamps at the bottom and look like leeches or attracted nipples to the asphalt! "
From 2007 to 2009 the park was renovated, including by replanting, creating a new pond and renewing the technical systems. The canton of Aargau Archeology conducted exploratory boreholes. She came across remnants of the Roman road that led from Aquae Helveticae to Turicum ( Zurich ). The remains of several Roman buildings made of half-timbered and broken stones were found near the pond. Two well-preserved pottery kilns from the middle of the 1st century still contained fragments from the last kiln.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Heidi Berger, Rainer Zulauf, Andrea Schaer, Jörg Villiger: The redesign of the Baden spa park - from the ideal plan in 2003 to the first phase of renovation . In: Baden New Years Papers . tape 80 . here + now, Baden 2011, ISBN 978-3-03919-177-2 , p. 60-68 .
- ↑ a b Fabian Furter: "The spa guests crept everywhere" . In: Baden New Years Papers . tape 80 . here + now , Baden 2011, ISBN 978-3-03919-177-2 , p. 50-59 .
- ^ Hermann Hesse : Kurgast. Notes from a Baden cure . Suhrkamp Verlag , Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-518-74392-8 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 28 ′ 45.8 " N , 8 ° 18 ′ 37.8" E ; CH1903: 665718 / 259102