This baroque complex built in the early 18^th century to designs by the Italian architect Giovanni Francesco Guerniero consisted of a giant palace with a statue of Hercules and a waterfall 250 metres (820’) long. The original plans envisaged a huge project, but only a third of it was ever implemented. The grounds were transformed into a landscaped park after the Seven Years War. The Early Romantic phase of this work under Landgrave Friedrich II was marked by a plethora of atmospheric outdoor structures. The Classical landscape garden was designed from 1785 under Wilhelm IX. Drawing on natural features, an extensive idealised ”natural” landscape with artificial waterfalls and pools was created along the axis of the original waterfall. The linear baroque vista merged with the versatile landscape garden and its mimicry of nature to create this well-known garden artefact, which is now the biggest hill park in Europe.  

Architects S.L. du Ry and H.C. Jussow designed Schloss Wilhelmshöhe as a neo-classical residence for Landgrave Wilhelm IX, the future Elector Wilhelm I. It was built in 1786–1798. Since the damage suffered in the Second World War, only the Weissenstein Wing still boasts its original room arrangement and interior finishing. The latter incorporates some of the finest examples of art in the period around 1800. Neo-classical wall and ceiling stucco, furniture in Louis Seize and Empire style and marble sculpture based on Ancient originals vividly illustrate the taste of the aristocracy as it shifted away from the baroque. The noble simplicity of many domestic rooms testifies to the more private character of stately homes in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries as the rigid courtly ceremonies of absolutist rulers, designed to demonstrate their power, began to wane.