Schwerin Castle
— — a fairytale built out of the nineteenth century.
Not only on a wall.
“Set on its own small island in the Schweriner See, the castle is the seat of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The current building is mostly mid-nineteenth century, a Romantic-Historicist composition stacked with turrets and a gold-leafed dome, modelled in part on the Château de Chambord in the Loire. A baroque garden runs out the back across a causeway. Swans use the lake. The locals call it the Neuschwanstein of the north, which is unfair to both. from the studio
Schwerin Castle, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Schwerin Castle (Schweriner Schloss) sits on an island at the south end of the Schweriner See in northern Germany, in the historic capital of the Duchy of Mecklenburg. A castle has stood on this site since at least the tenth century, when a Slavic fortification guarded the lake crossing. The present building was largely constructed between 1845 and 1857 for Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II, designed by Georg Adolph Demmler with input from Gottfried Semper and Friedrich August Stüler. Since 1990 it has housed the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state parliament.
The exterior is sandstone and brick faced in stucco, organised around a five-sided plan that follows the shape of the island. Demmler took the Château de Chambord as a primary reference; the silhouette of pinnacles, turrets, and the central gold-leafed dome belongs to the mid-century Romantic Historicism that was sweeping the German courts. Inside, the throne room, ancestral gallery, and Bildersaal carry gilded woodwork and ceiling paintings by Gaston Lenthe. The Schweriner Residenzensemble was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2024.
Entry to the museum wing (the Schlossmuseum) is via the Burggarten side; the Landtag occupies the south wing and is not open to the public outside scheduled events. The baroque Schlossgarten lies across a stone causeway, with a kreuzkanal cut by Jean Laurent Legeay in the 1740s. The closest rail connection is Schwerin Hauptbahnhof, about a fifteen-minute walk through the old town. The whole island holds the eye best at late-afternoon light off the lake, when the dome reads pale gold.