About this place
The Leineschloss rises where the medieval Altstadt meets the river, its pale facade and Corinthian columns fronting the slow green water of the Leine. What began around 1300 as a Franciscan friary was transformed from 1636 into a ducal residence, and over the following centuries it grew into one of the grandest courts in northern Europe, complete with an opera house where George Frideric Handel once performed. This was the cradle of a dynasty that would rule both Hanover and Great Britain, for the future King George the First was born within these walls in 1660. In the early nineteenth century the court architect Georg Ludwig Friedrich Laves gave the palace its neoclassical face and its signature portico. Allied bombing left it a burnt-out shell in the Second World War, but between 1957 and 1962 the architect Dieter Oesterlen rebuilt it, marrying the surviving historic wings to a bold modern plenary chamber. Today the palace is anything but a museum piece, for it is the working home of Lower Saxony's democracy.
Key facts
- 1636 year — Duke George began turning a former Franciscan friary into a ducal palace
- 6 columns — Corinthian columns form the classicist portico designed by Laves
- 1962 year — Post-war reconstruction turned the ruin into a modern parliament building
📍 Hannah-Arendt-Platz 1, 30159, Hannover