Hambacher Schloss
Luftbild Schlossanlage
Auffahrt zum Schloss mit dem Restaurantgebäude an der rechten Seite
Blick über den Hof zum Restaurantgebäude
Großer Festsaal
Innenraum Schloss
Dachterrasse auf dem restaurantgebäude
Fassade im Anschnitt mit Panoramablick in die Landschaft
Innenraum des Restaurants
Das Besucherhaus an der Auffahrt zum Schloss
Außenansicht
Polygonaler Innenraum des Besucherhauses
Lageplan

Hambacher Schloss

LocationHambacher Schloss 1832, D-67434 Neustadt an der Weinstraße
ClientStiftung Hambacher Schloss, vertr. durch Landesbetrieb LBB
Building period2005–2018
VolumeConversion: GFA 3.500m² New restaurant: GFA 1.300 m² New visitor centre: GFA 453m²
ProcedureCompetition 2004, 1st Prize

Hambacher Schloss, which once hosted the “National Festival of the Germans”, is a unique symbol of European and German history. The contemporary scheme adopts a cautious strategy in cleaning, opening up and heightening the intensity of the surviving fabric of the building. The interventions aimed to highlight the existing historical structures without significantly altering them, in order to make the connections between different spaces and time periods more clearly legible. The new restaurant building that has been constructed to the south of the complex can be read as a continutation of the historical defensive fortifications. A new visitor centre was constructed on the external encircling wall; its volumes, inspired by the archetypical form of the house, underscore the typology of the adjacent building. The configuration reflects the architectural hierarchy of the castle ensemble: crowned by the castle itself, it unfurls across the inner encircling wall to the outer wall with the visitor centre. The facades incorporate the region's typical yellow Leistädt sandstone, which also features in the surviving structures from the original castle.
For his work on Hambach Castle, Max Dudler received the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany 2012, an award at the German Architecture Prize 2013, the German Natural Stone Prize 2013 and the Design Prize of the Wüsenrot Foundation in 2014. The visitor house received special recognition at the German Natural Stone Prize 2018.