Farmyard The unrendered brick courtyard, also known as the outer bailey, used to occupy the eastern part of the north and south wings as well as the entire east wing of the complex. The first floor housed cattle, sheep, game and horse stables as well as the manorial stables, tack room, coachman's room and cleaning room. After farming was abandoned, some of the stables were converted into a coach house and riding hall as well as a wood store. The upper floors housed the quarters for horse and cattle servants, stable staff and other servants such as the head forester, whose apartment was built in 1807. They were converted into apartments in the 1960s. There was also a large grain barn in the eastern outer bailey wing. At the south-east corner of the buildings there is a small
oriel on the upper floor, which can already be seen on the Roidkin drawing of the 18th century and thus belongs to the building stock of the Baroque complex. It was probably higher than the roof in the past and served as a lookout. The southern and eastern outer façade is decorated with a simple tooth
frieze on the eaves and base
cornice, which can also be found in part on the courtyard-side façades. In the past, all sides of the courtyard were decorated with it.
Western part The western part of the castle consists of the manor house with corner tower in the south-western area, its structural counterpart at the north-western corner of the complex and a central building that connects the two parts and also houses the main portal. Because the residential and administrative rooms of the castle were located in this area, the western section, which is over 100 meters long, is particularly representative and forms the showpiece. This is reflected, for example, in the fact that it is plastered and painted pink and is also higher than the service buildings. The northern part of the west wing was occupied by storage areas, warehouses and ancillary rooms on the first floor before it was converted into archive space. The upper floor housed the manorial living quarters, bedrooms and guest rooms. Externally, this part of the castle resembles the west wing of the manor house. The western part of the north wing is called the
pensioner and domestics wing or simply the
pensioner wing. Its first floor is the former
Halfmannshaus, while the upper floor, which was added later, formerly housed the rooms of the Rentei and the rentmaster's apartment. Like the northern part of the west wing, the building has a
tile covered
hipped roof. At the eastern end of the
Reintei wing is a slender square tower with two storeys, topped by a hipped roof. It has an almost identical counterpart at the eastern end of the manor house. The outer façades of the two wings are divided into eight axes by windows, with four of the eight first floor windows each having a
segmental arch roof. This axial emphasis is repeated in the attic with small
dormer windows. The windows of the manor house are - like almost all the windows in the west section - fitted with gray
shutters. The segmental arches can be found above the first floor windows of the two three-storey corner towers, while the openings above them on the second floor are crowned by triangular gables. Both towers have curved hoods, which are topped by a gallery-enclosed lantern. Kalkum's tower hoods are thus somewhat similar to those of
Schloss Clemensruhe in
Bonn-Poppelsdorf. The manor house has two entrances on the courtyard side, both of which have their own small open staircase. These were connected by a shared platform in 1824. Next to the entrance in the west wing, a
bronze plaque commemorates the "red countess" Sophie von Hatzfeldt. The middle of the west front is occupied by an intermediate building with the main portal of the palace. In contrast to the windows in the other parts of the palace, the building has shutterless arched windows on the first floor surrounded by
blind arcades. Although it also has two storeys, its flat hipped roof makes it lower than the other parts of the western section. The lantern motif of the corner towers is repeated on the roof by a small turret, which was erected there in 1967. It is modeled on a predecessor that had been destroyed by lightning. The tower top has been missing since at least the beginning of 2014. Now back again. The angel has since been restored. The wide
Zufahrtsallee, christened "Kalkumer Schloßallee" on 18 September 1931, runs in a straight line over a distance of just over one kilometer towards this Portalbau. Shortly before the three-arched bridge over the moat, the access road crosses the Schwarzbach over a small plastered brick bridge dating from 1809, which is flanked by two statues of reclining lions. They were made in 1652 by the master sculptor Johann from Kaiserswerth. The round-arched west gate, also known as the
English Gate, is located in a
Mittelrisalit built according to plans by Johann Peter Cremer with a joint cut and flat triangular
pediment. It is flanked by
dorizing columns. Above the archway is a richly decorated
relief with the coat of arms of the von Hatzfeld-Wildenburg family. It shows the Hatzfeld coat of arms (black wall anchor in gold) in fields 1 and 4 and the Wildenburg coat of arms (three red roses in silver) in fields 2 and 3. The relief was created in 1854 by the Düsseldorf sculptor
Dietrich Mein(h)ardus, who also designed the western entrance door of the manor house, which is richly decorated with
carvings.
North gate, kitchen building and inner courtyard Until the neoclassical conversion at the beginning of the 19th century, the main entrance to the palace was in the north of the grounds. Accordingly, the castle gate in the middle of the north wing was more elaborately designed than the rest of the north wing. A four-arched bridge leads to it, the first three arches of which are made of trachyte ashlars, while the last is made of brick, thus documenting that the gate once had a
drawbridge.
Anchor plates in the form of the year 1775 bear witness to the construction of the bridge in that year, which replaced a wooden predecessor at the time. The rollers of the former drawbridge are still preserved in the semicircular archway, and the aperture for holding the bridge is also still clearly visible. Furthermore, two
embrasures for
hooked rifles on the sides of the gate framed by Boss ashlars made of Ratinger limestone bear witness to its former defensibility. In the
keystone of the archway is the coat of arms of the von Winkelhausen family, framed by auricles and
scrollwork and crowned by a count's crown. In the past, it was probably painted in color. Below it is the year 1663, which is only partially preserved and thus testifies to the year of construction of this wing. The former gap between the south wing of the manor house and the south wing of the farmyard has been closed since 1810 by the so-called
kitchen building (also known as the
kitchen wing). The name of the three-axis intermediate building shows that it has always been home to a kitchen. Its three storeys - the two upper storeys are considerably lower than the ground floor - are enclosed by a flat
gabled roof. On the first floor of the
kitchen building there is a side gate, to which a modern concrete bridge leads today. In the past, the southern moat was spanned by a wooden bridge that led to the neighboring, slender square tower and the gate there. Its foundations were found in 1948 during repair work. The courtyard façades of the castle are all very plain and give the impression of an estate rather than a princely residence. The only special feature of the inner courtyard are three Linden ring, which take up three quarters of the courtyard area. The fourth area, facing the manor house, is designed as a paved driveway courtyard. The trees were planted in 1825 according to plans by Weyhe.
Today's interiors Kalkum Palace offers a total of 6500 square meters of usable space. Visitors enter the
vestibule in the west wing of the manor house through the main entrance on the courtyard side with its
Ratingen marble jamb. Called the
Marble Hall because of its black and white
marble flooring, this room is the first in a series of living and ceremonial rooms, which today are also referred to as
state rooms. This sequence of rooms, consisting of the
Marble Hall,
Brown Room,
Green Room,
Billiard Room and
Music Room as well as the former dining room and library, was - with the exception of the former dining room - restored from 1956 to 1960 with its late classicist furnishings and subsequently fitted with historical furniture and matching
chandeliers. Today, the rooms present themselves with restored or reconstructed wall and ceiling paintings, splendidly designed stucco work and precious
parquet floors with
inlays. Of the old original 19th century furnishings, only two mirrors and two chandeliers (one of which is in the
billiard room) remain in the palace. The south wing of the manor house is occupied on the first floor by two large three-axis halls. In the 1950s, the eastern one had no original furnishings, so it was renovated in a simple style and can now be used as a conference hall. Only its stucco rosette dates from an earlier period (around 1870). In contrast, the western hall was almost completely restored to its former splendor from 1836 to 1841. However, its original ceiling paintings have been lost. It is called the
Music Hall after the motifs in the wall panels depicting lyres. Above the marble fireplace on the long side opposite the windows is a wall mirror framed by ornate stucco
ornamentation. A stucco ceiling frieze and surrounding
arabesques as wall paintings complete the lavish décor of this room, the highlight of which is the floor with a covering of valuable precious woods with inlays of
mother-of-pearl. Ludwig Pose was also responsible for the decorative paintings here, while Lenhard and Moosbrugger created the stucco work. The library on the first floor of the southwest tower is accessible through a wallpaper door in the western wall of the
music hall. The originally square room was transformed into an
octagon by the addition of walls at the corners. On three of the four recessed walls are glass shelving cabinets, which were installed there in 1854. The ceiling painting of the room imitates a
coffered ceiling, while the inlaid floor is characterized by a star motif. The upper floor of the manor house - the former residential floor of the building - now houses modern administrative offices, a library, a user room and the restoration workshops of the State Archives, which moved in there in July 1958. The original furnishings from the first half of the 19th century are no longer preserved, with the exception of some stucco work by the Krefeld stucco artist Eugen Selb. The only room that still dates from the Hatzfeld era is the so-called
tower room. This is presumably the bedroom of Countess Maria Anna in the south-western corner tower, which was designed in the
Empire style according to plans by Leydel.
Castle park Weyhe's new layout Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe's design for the Kalkum castle park dates back to 1808. As a central element, he envisaged a
landscape garden in the English style, which featured the typical elements of this park form: visual axes, curved paths, groups of trees and solitary trees. The old castle mill from the 18th century on the southern edge of the park was incorporated into the design. Weyhe also took into account the existing gardens on the west and south sides of the castle in his plan. The south garden can already be seen in the 18th century Roidkin drawing, where it is connected to the palace buildings by a wooden bridge. The strictly symmetrical garden followed
Baroque models and was divided into four equal squares by two paths crossing at right angles in the middle. At the intersection was a rondel planted with trees, the paths were bordered by hedges. Weyhe transformed it into a
kitchen garden. To the east of the palace, he had a large, geometrically structured orchard laid out on the other side of the road, for which
apricot,
cherry,
apple and
pear trees were purchased. They stood along paths that ran in a star shape towards a central traffic circle. In the southern kitchen garden, sweet chestnuts and chestnuts stood alongside fruit trees. On the north side of the palace, Weyhe created two rectangular Compartments. The eastern one was intended to incorporate a riding arena as a formal garden element, but this was only realized as a rectangular lawn. The western compartment consisted of a tree-lined, elongated pond with a small island, also known as the "English pond". It was bordered by a band of lawn and a path running around it. The existing small garden on the west side of the grounds was considerably enlarged and the western central axis of the palace was extended through the Schlossallee to Kaiserswerth. For its transformation into an English landscape garden, Weyhe purchased a large number of different types of trees and shrubs, including weeping ashs,
weeping willows,
Red firs,
Acacia,
Weymouth pines,
Sweet chestnut, Canadian poplar,
Dutch elms and red cedars. This area of the palace park also included a bowling alley established in 1812, which is recognizable on the
Pesch map as a cross-shaped construction in the southern part of the park, a shooting range consisting of a long rampart with a small hill at the end, and an ice cellar on the southern edge of the park that already existed in 1809. A small temple with a hexagonal floor plan, surrounded by eight pillars and with an eight-columned top, was erected on a mound created by the excavation of the castle pond. With his park design, Weyhe created spatially and functionally separate garden spaces that communicated with the respective neighboring palace wings and were co-determined in size and design by their architecture. Each of the garden spaces was designed differently and fulfilled a different purpose. While the landscape garden and the northern compartments were dedicated to pastime, sport and pleasure, the south and east gardens fulfilled practical purposes as kitchen gardens, where
aesthetic and practical concerns were mixed, as the fruit and vegetable gardens also had decorative elements to a certain extent.
The park today Of the palace park laid out by Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe, the basic structures of the semi-circular
English landscape garden on the west side, the northern compartments and the basic layout of the southern kitchen garden are still preserved today. In the park, whose grounds rise and fall in undulating lines, there are mostly native trees and only a few exotic species. For example, the avenue leading up to the west portal is lined with lime trees. Two smaller, curved paths branch off from this access road in the central axis and lead around the
landscape park, which is bordered on the outside by
hedges and woodland planting, until they meet the canalized Schwarzbach stream at the southwest and northwest corners of the castle and cross it by means of small bridges. The Schwarzbach feeds the castle moat and the northern castle pond. Coming from
Wülfrath, it enters the palace park in the south, crosses it by flowing a long way parallel to the western palace moat - separated from it only by a dam with a narrow path - to flow into the
Rhine north of the palace park at
Wittlaer. On the southern edge of the park is the ice cellar, which dates back to the beginning of the 19th century and still has an entrance. Nearby, in the area of the south-western park meadow, there is a small mound with masonry. These are the remains of the shooting range established in 1819. On the opposite northern edge of the park, there is still the artificially heaped up
Tempelberg, whose small Chinese wooden temple is no longer preserved. At the edge of the southern moat on the eastern
enclosure wall is a small
orangery, which replaced the large orangery built under Weyhe. It was completely overhauled in 1965/66. The former garden pavilion, also known as the
summer house and
tea house, leans against the eastern wall from the inside. Like the castle, the small tower-like plaster building is painted pink and is topped by a baroque dome with a lantern. Its exact date of construction is unknown, but it may date back to plans by Georg Peter Leydel What is certain is that it was not built in connection with Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe's park plans, but already existed at the time. During the major renovation work in the first half of the 19th century, work was carried out in the pavilion several times. For example, it was painted by Ludwig Pose, who was also responsible for the wall and ceiling paintings in the manor house. The garden house was converted into a memorial to
Ferdinand Lassalle in 1975 to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. The interior of the building is designed as a
cenotaph. A block of green Italian marble has the shape of a
sarcophagus, above which stands the
bust of
Lassalle on a marble
corbel. On the northern outer wall of the pavilion, plaques made of the same marble hang in two shallow niches with a quote by Ferdinand Lassalle as well as data on his life and work. == Literature ==