Travelog post for: Greta

Today we visited the Villa (mansion) Hügel (hill).

It's located on a hill overlooking the Lake Baldeney in Essen, a big industrial city in the west of Germany.

It was built and inhabited by the Krupp family, who owned a lot of steelworks and related industry.

When you now enter an elevator anywhere in the world you might see their sign with the 3 interlocking rings and the name ThyssenKrupp (The Thyssens were another important family in this area.)
They were proud of the park and specially imported plants, even big trees, from Amerika and other continents.

Today the Villa is used for big events like exhibitions of art collections (they organize their own of international artwork, e.g. from Tibetian monasteries or a big China exhibit) or a museum of industrial culture and local history.

At the moment it houses the most important artworks of the Folkwang museum, that's being rebuilt. They have van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne, Manet, Rodin, Kandinsky, Picasso etc.. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the inside because bags and cameras were forbidden. I'll have to content myself with the pictures I can find in books and online.

This is the approach to the Villa:

In the surrounding park we found this cute gatekeeper's house:


A nice statue of a horse with a good view of the main building and entrance:

A playhouse for the children of the family with child-sized doors, a full kitchen, upper story and basement:

A sandbox and shady place for the nanny:

The gardenside entrance to the library that's all done in dark wood with a small gallery running around the top. I tried to get a peek inside, makes for funny pictures: