Roman House
About This Site
A temple on a slope above the Ilm meadows, built for a duke who wanted somewhere to be left alone. The foundation's description of what it was for is unusually direct: this was Carl August's favourite residence and his retreat — a private house disguised as a public monument, standing in a park anyone could walk through.
The antique, quoted twice, 1792–1797
It went up between 1792 and 1797 to designs by Johann August Arens, with Goethe running the site and Christian Friedrich Schuricht of Dresden fitting out the rooms. From the meadow below it reads as two buildings stacked: a basement storey of heavy Doric columns carrying a smooth villa with an Ionic portico above. That is the Greek orders used in their proper sequence, on a Thuringian hillside, by people who had mostly not seen Greece. Weimar Classicism is usually discussed as literature; this is what it looked like when it was built.
The park's museum of itself
The house now holds the original sandstone sculptures that once stood out along the park's paths in the weather, which makes a visit two things at once: the duke's retreat, and the store where the park keeps the pieces it can no longer leave outside. Entry is free — unusual for a building of this quality — and it opens in the summer season only, so the winter walker sees the outside and nothing else.
Questions visitors ask
- What is the Römisches Haus?
- A temple-shaped house above the Ilm meadows, built as a private retreat for Duke Carl August — the foundation calls it his favourite residence, a private house disguised as a public monument in a park anyone could walk through.
- Who built it, and when?
- Built 1792–1797 to designs by Johann August Arens, with Goethe running the site and Christian Friedrich Schuricht of Dresden fitting out the rooms.
- Can I visit, and is it free?
- Entry is free. It opens in the summer season only, Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–18:00, closed Mondays and closed in winter.
- What's inside?
- The original sandstone sculptures that once stood out along the park's paths in the weather — a visit is the duke's retreat and the park's own store for what it can no longer leave outside, at once.
Connected Historical Figures
duke • grand duke • patron
Built for him, and described by the foundation as his favourite residence and his retreat.
writer • statesman • naturalist
He directed the building work between 1792 and 1797.
Visit Information
Free
Summer season: Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, closed Mon; closed in winter
Park an der Ilm, 99423 Weimar
50.9712, 11.3355
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
Classicism as architecture rather than literature — the antique built, not quoted.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.