Château de Kolbsheim, Historical castle in Kolbsheim, France.
The Château de Kolbsheim is a castle built in the 18th century, sitting on elevated ground with two distinct garden styles surrounding it. A formal French garden with geometric paths meets an English landscape park that extends down toward the Bruche river.
The present upper castle replaced a noble house of the Mullenheim family; a balustrade inscription dates the new building to 1703, built for Marie Catherine Wurmser de Vendenheim. In 1719 Jeanne Catherine Wurmser married Baron Frédéric François Antoine de Falkenhayn, and the couple bought up the whole seigneurie by 1759. Jean-Georges Humann, Louis-Philippe's finance minister, acquired it in 1824 and added the south wing in 1848.
The Grunelius family, friends of Catholic philosophers Jacques and Raïssa Maritain since 1927, converted under their influence and had Victor Hammer build a small pink sandstone chapel against the parish church's south wall in 1933. Around 1950, fourteen sculpted sandstone panels by Philippe Kaeppelin showing the Stations of the Cross were fixed to the garden's last terrace wall. Philosophers met annually at the château until 2014, when the Cercle Maritain in the street-facing outbuildings closed.
The garden is open to the public regularly, arranged by the Grunelius family, who own the château. The upper terrace holds the geometric French garden with ponds and fountains; the lower ground is an English park of hundred-year-old trees. The site lies at the western end of Kolbsheim, about 15 km southwest of Strasbourg.
The garden's last terrace carries a series of carved pink sandstone panels showing the fourteen Stations of the Cross, fixed there around 1950 and carved by Philippe Kaeppelin. The philosophers Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, friends of the Grunelius family, are buried in the village cemetery, as is the musician Nicolas Nabokov.
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