Schloss Ehrenhof

Begun in 1720 for the Elector Palatine Carl Philipp, Mannheim's palace was laid out on a scale meant to answer Versailles, its Ehrenhof — the court of honour — opening towards the chessboard grid of the new residence city. What made the place matter to music was the orchestra kept there under Carl Philipp's successor. Trained by Johann Stamitz, the Mannheim court band became the most disciplined ensemble in Europe, credited with the long swelling crescendo that lifts a whole body of strings at once; the young Mozart, who spent the winter of 1777–78 in the city, took what he heard away with him. Air raids in 1943 gutted much of the building. Rebuilt, it belongs now to the University of Mannheim, and the great courtyard serves for performance in the open.