Stella Rheni, Architectural heritage villa in Bad Godesberg, Germany.
Stella Rheni is a 19th-century mansion in Bad Godesberg featuring classical architectural elements such as marble columns, mosaic tilework, and decorative interior paintings. The house sits within spacious grounds with views toward the surrounding countryside.
Berlin banker Karl von der Heydt bought the 14.3-hectare hill site "Auf dem Wacholder" in 1890 and had the Elberfeld firm Plange & Hagenberg build the villa; the shell was approved in February 1892 and the house was ready around summer 1893, the year in the emblem above the entrance portal. In 1926/27 the Jesuits bought it and built the Aloisiuskolleg boarding school in the park, using the villa as a dormitory under the name Stella Rheni.
The name Stella Rheni, Latin for "Star of the Rhine", dates from the Jesuit era, when the villa became a boarding house for younger pupils of the Aloisiuskolleg. The building is also called Schloss auf dem Wacholder after the hill it stands on. The street below, Elisabethstraße, is named after Karl von der Heydt's wife Elisabeth.
The villa stands at the highest point of the Wacholderhöhe; the entrance portal on Elisabethstraße 18 bears the year 1893 in its emblem. The grounds adjoin the Aloisiuskolleg school, which occupies the park, so the site is not freely open to visitors. The Stella Rheni itself has served since 2016 as an event venue.
In 1898 Karl von der Heydt hosted a garden party at the villa for participants of the German Chess Federation congress, among them Wilhelm Steinitz and Mikhail Chigorin. Around 1900 he donated a plot east of the house as the site for a Bismarck tower, which still stands opposite the drive gate on Elisabethstraße.
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