Parkanlage Schloss Rauenstein

Parkanlage Schloss Rauenstein occupies a hillside in the east of Überlingen, with Lake Constance and the town below. Old trees, flowerbeds and a long chestnut avenue fill grounds that were once a private estate and now welcome anyone. At the centre stands the villa, a neobaroque building raised in 1903.

Otto Ziesig, a Swiss businessman and former cavalry captain, commissioned it as a home to match his standing. Architect Franz Xaver Dollinger gave the building two storeys under a mansard roof, with bay windows, turrets and balconies. Inside, the rooms carry Jugendstil stucco work and wood carvings. Ziesig died in 1920, and his daughter sold the place to the district of Überlingen in 1950. It went on to serve as an administrative office, a school and an educational centre. In 2015 the city bought the whole property, outbuildings and about three and a half hectares of land included. The plan was to make it a permanent cultural and educational site.

Just below the villa runs the Apfellehrpfad, an educational apple trail. The office for landscape management, fruit and horticulture laid it out at the end of the 1980s. Around a hundred apple trees from more than fifty varieties line it, many of them old or regional Lake Constance sorts. It doubles as a living collection where researchers study disease susceptibility, pest infestation and possible resistances. Once you have walked the rows, the benches under the chestnut avenue wait with a view over the water.