Bad Krozingen Palace

General information

The building, which was constructed in 1578 - 79, was used by the monastery of Saint Blaise, as the seat of administration for the monastery’s lands in the Upper Rhine plain and around the Kaiserstuhl Mountain. In the 1th Century the Monastery allowed its premises to be used for conducting the affairs of the governors representing the Lords Staufen and Kirchhofen.

Following the dissolution of the monastery, the priory, which was now designated as a palace, passed into the ownership of the Schauenburg family in 1807 and later into the ownership of other families of the nobility. Today the palace is owned by the Gombert / von Gleichenstein family.

The building, which has maintained its simple style, like the residences of many other aristocratic families in south Baden, features a stair tower at its centre. The relief which was installed in the middle of the stair tower shows the coat of arms of the Abbot II of St Blaise together with the year of the tower’s construction. At the foot of the tower there is a remarkable stone relief carving depicting the combined coat of arms of the Lords of Krozingen and Falkenstein. The stone, the origins of which are unknown, was apparently not added to the masonry until the 19th Century.

Since 1974 the palace has housed the outstanding collection of historic keyboard instruments which was built up by Fritz Neumeyer (1900–1983), Rolf Junghanns (1945–1993) and Bradford Tracey (1951–1987). A unique feature of the Krozingen collection is that all the instruments can still be played. The instruments from the centrepiece of the concerts at the Bad Krozingen Palace at which renowned performers bring these venerable old instruments back to life!