Muskau Park
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How it came to be
A fortress on the Neisse at Muskau is recorded as early as the 13th century. Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, lord of the estate from 1811, studied gardens in England and in 1815 began laying out a park on both banks of the river. Designed as a painting with plants, using local vegetation to bring out the existing landscape, it draws in the town and the surrounding farmland.
Pückler rebuilt the medieval fortress as the New Castle, the centre of the composition, with paths radiating from it. His wife, Lucie von Hardenberg, also took part in the work, and in 1834 he published his theory in Remarks on Landscape Gardening. Crushing debts forced him to sell the estate in 1845, and the next year it was bought by Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, who had Pückler's pupil Eduard Petzold complete the design.
During the Battle of Berlin both castles were destroyed and all four bridges over the Neisse were razed. In 1945 the river became the Oder-Neisse border, leaving two thirds of the park in Poland. After 1989 Germany and Poland worked together to restore it, and in 2004 it was inscribed as a joint World Heritage site. The English Bridge across the Neisse was repaired and rededicated on 17 October 2011.
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