Tiefurt Mansion and Park

Tiefurt Mansion (Schloss Tiefurt) is a small country palace on the Ilm's outskirts, famed as the summer retreat of Duchess Anna Amalia. Originally a modest manor (built mid-16th century and expanded in 1765), it became Anna Amalia's beloved residence from 1781 until her death in 1807. The two-story house has intimate scale – a main building of just seven rooms per floor – yet it hosted a lively court of poets and musicians in the Classical era. Wieland, Goethe, and Corona Schröter gathered here for literary and musical evenings, making Tiefurt a pastoral Museion. In 1907 the mansion opened as a museum. Visitors today tour its charming chambers, including Anna Amalia's music room and bedroom, restored to late-18th-century style with original furniture and decor. The surrounding Tiefurt Park is equally enchanting: an English landscape garden with flowing meadows, ancient trees, and ornamental structures (like the Temple of the Muses) tied to the duchess's cultural circle. As part of the Classical Weimar UNESCO site, Tiefurt embodies the idyllic, intimate side of Weimar's Golden Age – a place where art, nature, and sociability were delightfully combined.