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Linger a while in front of the marvellous music pavilion from the Jugendstil period. Imagine the orchestra taking its place on the stage and beginning its performance…
Can you see the colonnades? They too are filled with the sounds of music when the orchestra plays! Specialities from all over the world are traded here.
Initially, the colonnades were a row of wooden boutiques until the architect Carl Dernfeld was commissioned in the middle of the 19th century to construct today’s stone buildings in the arcade style, modelled on the “Passages de Paris”. At the time, the small shops were a sensation! There had hardly been anything like them before – at least not for the upper classes. The most exclusive retailers opened their boutiques here! People bought the most beautiful jewellery in the world from Mellerio and the Rheinboldt tobacco shop was so successful that people in Baden-Baden started making their own cigars.
It was the Russian community that made smoking cigarettes fashionable! The Russian immigrants met under the tree in front of Rheinboldt’s shop and smoked cigars. That’s why the locals called this tree the “Russian tree”.
Do you know the novel “Smoke” by the Russian poet Turgenev? In it, he described the life of Russian guests in Baden-Baden in the 19th century in a wonderfully accurate way! The novel was even made into a film by Südwestrundfunk together with Russian television!
Baden-Baden was a favourite with Russian writers! Not only Dostoyevsky, but also Turgenev, Gogol and later Tolstoy enjoyed the artistic freedom of the spa town – and an audience that understood them.
But not only prominent artists, but also personalities from politics and the ruling houses came to Baden-Baden: The royal and later imperial Prussian couple were among the regular guests. Can you see the Dorint Hotel directly behind us? This is where the Hotel Messmer used to be, where the German Majesties resided year after year. The hotel was closed to the public when the monarchs were present, as it was from here that the fate of the empire was determined.
In 1863, there was even a meeting of three European emperors: Franz Joseph of Austria, Tsar Alexander and Napoleon the Third. The aristocracy, the artistic elite, representatives of trade, finance and manufacturing – everyone who was anyone met in Baden-Baden in the summer!
In 1850, two emperors, an empress, three kings, a queen, a grand duke, four grand duchesses, a grand prince and no fewer than 12 princesses and 16 princes stayed in Baden-Baden within one season. And that’s not all: for the same year, the chronicle also records 50,000 other guests – and that with a population of just 6,700!
