The estate

Hessenburg is a charming microcosm that invites visitors to linger and explore. The historic layout of the 8 hectares estate is unchanged. The manor house, which was built in 1840, is at the center. An enormous farmyard extends to the north. It is home to a former blacksmith’s workshop (which is now the Kranich Café), carriage works, and a reaper’s cottage, all positioned symmetrically around the fire pond, as well as the unrenovated former school and administration building, a cowshed, and stables that were built later for collective agriculture in the former GDR. The former private park of the aristocratic von Hesse family, filled with wonderful old trees, is located to the south. The icehouse (now the Garden House) next to the manor house kept things cool in the warm summer months. The early German tower mound with a ring ditch in the northeast is a relic from the 13th century and marks the earliest settlement of the village of Schlichtemühl. This is the site where the medieval knight Antonius von dem Bughe built a motte-and-bailey castle with a moat. It was not until 1840 that the von Hesse family secured the renaming rights to Hessenburg. 

From 2015 to 2020, landscape architect Ludivine Gragy oversaw the restoration of the estate in terms of its historical significance, design, and ecological aspects.