ABSTRACT
The palace of the Dukes of Württemberg at Stuttgart formed an irregular quadrangle with round towers at the corners. Its thick walls, heavily barred windows, drawbridge and portcullis made it look more like a fortress or a prison than a princely residence. The interior, it is true, offset to some extent the grimness of the exterior. Pollnitz, while calling the palace ‘unpleasant’, was forced to admit that ‘the apartments are beautiful’. Chappuzeau admired in this building, ‘one of the largest and most magnificent in Germany’, the big hall where the tournaments took place, and the winding staircase leading to it ‘so broad that two men could ride up it abreast without touching each other.’ 1 Keysler, who visited the Schloss in 1730, describes a vast room in the castle filled with a jumble of stuffed animals, horses and favourite hounds of the Duke, casts, precision instruments and family portraits, among which the effigy of ‘a bearded woman had strayed’.
