Kurhaus Wiesbaden

Kaiser Wilhelm II, at the opening in 1907, called it the most beautiful spa house in the world, and Wiesbaden has never found reason to disagree. Friedrich von Thiersch designed it at a cost of six million gold marks, replacing a modest cure house of 1810 with a building that gathers neoclassical portico, Belle Époque interiors and Jugendstil detail into a single civic gesture. The concert room, now the Friedrich-von-Thiersch-Saal, occupies the south wing: some forty metres long and seventeen high, seating around 1,350, with a Steinmeyer organ installed in 1954 after the original Sauer instrument was lost in the war. The Christian-Zais-Saal, the ballroom in the north wing, balances it. A casino has worked in the building since 1949, and extensive restoration followed in the 1980s. Wiesbaden's orchestral and festival life still converges here, in rooms built for a spa clientele that has long since given way to a concert public.