Baden-Baden’s “green salon” – one of the largest and most beautiful parks in Germany - is celebrating its birthday: 350 years of Lichtentaler Allee.

Grand birthday weekend, 8-10 July 2005

Lichtentaler Allee has been Baden-Baden’s vibrant, verdant calling card and the very heart of the town for 350 years. World-famous, extolled in verse, overwhelming in the sheer variety of its flowers and trees, the park extends through the town alongside the babbling River Oos. An elegant avenue and constantly changing monument to horticulture. Right up to the present day.

Luxuriant rhododendrons and azaleas, a magnificent avenue of lime trees, oaks and tulip trees, chestnuts, plane trees and alders abound. Nature serves up a breathtaking show at any time of the year as you walk along Lichtentaler Allee. Baden-Baden’s “green salon” puts on its most beautiful face in spring when crocuses, narcissi and wild tulips form a vibrantly coloured carpet at the foot of the trees and in early summer when rhododendrons emerge in sumptuous red and lilac. Or is the interplay of autumn colours altogether more
fascinating? When the Indian summer produces leaves in every shade from yellow to deep red? Or still and mysterious in winter. When the lush green is coated in hoar frost, the roses in the "Gönner"-garden are hibernating under fir branches, and herons stalk the banks of the Oos seeking their prey.

Grand birthday weekend, 8-10 July

We will be paying fitting homage to the grande dame that is Lichtentaler Allee during the grand birthday weekend. The celebrations will start with a benefit concert by the Baden-Baden Philharmonic (who gave a highly praised concert in Dubai in 2002 together with star tenor Placido Domingo) in the grounds of one of the world’s most beautiful hotels, the Brenner’s Park-Hotel that directly adjoins Lichtentaler Allee. Musicians from the Baden-Baden Philharmonic and actors will “recount” the history of Lichtentaler Allee at the most beguiling settings along the boulevard. Numerous guided botanical walks throughout the summer will enable you to discover everything about the huge floral variety here, about roses and rhododendrons, magnolias and dove trees, about all the glorious plants which make Baden-Baden with its Lichtentaler Allee so incomparable. A huge drumming
event for our youngsters (more than 3,000 drums) on 9 July in the inner courtyard of the abbey at the end of Lichtentaler Allee will be one of the highlights of the birthday weekend.
The Art Gallery, the collection Frieder Burda Museum and the Stadtmuseum – a veritable ensemble of art in Lichtentaler Allee – will all be holding exhibitions on a related theme: the Art Gallery a “Homage to Hans Kuhn”, a master of his art from Baden-Baden who was among the most important landscape painter of his days; the Stadtmuseum “Lichtentaler Allee Through The Ages”, a historical journey from the English garden to the famous promenade of our time; the collection Frieder Burda Museum will be grouping “Max Beckmann: Pictures from Baden-Baden” around its own collection, including two portraits of Lichtentaler Allee, “Fountain” and “Park at Night”.
For three days Lichtentaler Allee will be illuminated in awesome colour. Trees, monuments and bridges between the Theatre and Stadmuseum will become part of a set. As dusk falls the familiar “green salon” will be transformed into a mysterious park, a new production of light and shade.

Lichtentaler Allee – a masterpiece of trees, fountains and flowers, splendidly framed by the most beautiful monuments of the Belle Epoque. A scene quite without equal anywhere in the world.