Schloss Ramholz, Château in Ramholz, Schlüchtern, Germany

Schloss Ramholz is a castle complex in the Ramholz hamlet of Schlüchtern, built around the older Huttenschloss of 1501 with its stepped gables and stair tower. Hugo von Stumm had Munich architects Emanuel and Gabriel von Seidl add a new 80-room Historist wing in 1893–1896, mixing Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and Art Nouveau elements. The photograph shows a long three-storey range with pale, half-timbered and pink-red sections, a round pointed-roof tower and taller towers behind.

The property was first documented in 1167 as a holding of the von Steckelberg family and later changed hands several times. Its current form resulted from extensive renovations between 1893 and 1896, when the von Stumm family expanded the castle as their residence.

Hugo von Stumm's wife Ludovica corresponded with artists such as the Dresden Impressionist Robert Sterl, invited them to Ramholz and bought their works for the castle. The portraitist Philipp Alexius de László painted her portrait, and a bust of her by sculptor Ferdinand Seeboeck stands in the Schlüchtern hospital she endowed. From 1901 the painter Felix Muche-Ramholz served as estate manager.

The castle is private property and cannot be visited, but the surrounding 80-hectare park is open to visitors. You can walk the paths and discover smaller structures scattered throughout the grounds.

The park's pavilion was bought by Hugo von Stumm in the belief it was a work by Balthasar Neumann. In fact, Joseph Greissing built it; his 1719 invoice records it and a lost twin flanking the gate of the Hutten garden in Würzburg.