Vergilgrotte Tiefurt

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Virgil Grotto in the Tiefurt Castle Park
Detail of the pile of the Vergilgrotte Tiefurt
Detail of the pile of the Virgil Grotto with a torso of an antique female statue clad in chiton

The Vergilgrotte or rock grotto is a small, artificially created grotto , which is located in the eastern park area of Schloss Tiefurt near Weimar in Thuringia .

description

It belongs to a group of statues and other objects that found their place in the so-called tan wood . The Lohholz is a wooded, steep slope opposite the castle above the Ilm , but not identical to the Lohholz nature reserve . The Vergilgrotte was built in 1776 in honor of the Roman poet Virgil and can be reached via the main path, it is located in the uppermost part of the complex. Behind her in a westerly or northwestern direction, Kromsdorf already begins .

It is an expression of the enthusiasm for antiquity that prevailed at the courts of Europe, without which the construction of this park element in Tiefurt is hardly conceivable. The building was laid out by Karl Ludwig von Knebel , whose adviser in the design of the path was Adam Friedrich Oeser . Indeed, an association with the grave in the park hill of Posillipo in Naples should arise. It belongs to Anna Amalia's wrong turns. To do this, you have to cross the Ilm over the Schafsbrücke. In contrast to the Sphinx grotto at the Leutra spring in the Park an der Ilm , statuary or ornamental design elements were largely dispensed with, although Anna Amalia originally wanted an inscription by the poet. The grotto has two entrances, which are walled with round arches, and lead into the interior via small stairs. The grotto was built from limestone . There is a seat in it. Today the bench with the wooden seat is on stone supports, whereas it used to be made entirely of stone. There was also a stone table in the grotto. This system and the reference to Virgil should remind of the transience of life. Possibly to underline this, in the piling up of stones around the grotto, remains of a torso of a female statue based on ancient models dressed in a chiton or other architectural ornament parts with flower patterns can be found.

Web links

Commons : Vergilgrotte Tiefurt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard R. Kaiser: Tiefurt: Literature and Life at the Beginning of Weimar's Great Time , Wallstein-Verlag Göttingen 2020, ISBN 9783835336599 , p. 63 ff.
  2. Knebel could have received this suggestion from Rheinsberg , where such a monument already existed. Müller-Wolf: A landscape garden in the Ilm valley: the history of the ducal park in Weimar , Weimar 2007, p. 89 f.
  3. Susanne Müller-Wolff: A landscape garden in the Ilmtal: the history of the ducal park in Weimar . In: Dieter Höhnl (Hrsg.): Series of publications of the Freundeskreis Goethe-Nationalmuseum eV Volume 3 . Böhlau-Verlag, Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-20057-2 , pp. 97 . ( Text excerpts as digital copies on Google Books)
  4. ^ Friedrich Menzel: Tiefurt Castle. National research u. Memorials of Classical German Literature , Weimar 1978, p. 33.

Coordinates: 50 ° 59 '44.97 "  N , 11 ° 22' 1.26"  O