Jagdschloss Kranichstein, Renaissance hunting lodge in Kranichstein, Darmstadt, Germany

Jagdschloss Kranichstein is a three-winged Renaissance hunting lodge built for Landgrave George I by master builder Jakob Kesselhuth between 1578 and 1580. Its pale peach facade with a red tiled roof has a taller central block with a scrolled gable, a white animal-head relief and a small cupola, flanked by two lower wings with dormer windows. It stands behind a large lawn and today holds a hunting museum, the bioversum nature museum and a hotel.

George I, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, had the three-winged palace built between 1578 and 1580 by his master builder Jakob Kesselhuth. His successors used it for hunting for about 350 years; Ernest Louis and Louis VIII staged parforce hunts and had star-shaped rides cut through the surrounding forest. From 1863 Louis IV and his wife Alice, a daughter of Queen Victoria, lived here and later used it as a summer residence. In 1917 Ernest Louis gathered hunting equipment from his palaces to create the museum.

The name Kranichstein refers to the crane, and a white relief of an animal head sits on the scrolled gable above the entrance. Since the late 20th century the palace has been a wedding venue; Joschka Fischer married there in 1999. Each summer the Merck Philharmonie gives a garden concert in the palace park, modelled on the Last Night of the Proms.

The museum is located on the edge of Darmstadt and can be reached by public transport. Plan enough time to walk through the exhibitions, as the collections are extensive and spread across multiple rooms.

The Backhausteich east of the former palace park is not a fish-breeding pond: in 1875 the later Grand Duke Louis IV fell through its ice while skating, as his wife Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria, wrote to her mother. The pond is now used by walkers and cyclists from Darmstadt.