Holiday in Kassel

What makes Kassel special as a destination?

Kassel in North Hesse is the city of documenta and the Brothers Grimm — a unique combination of world art and fairy tale culture. Every five years, documenta, the world's most significant exhibition of contemporary art, transforms the entire city into a giant open-air museum. The Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013 and is the largest hillside park in Europe: The complex extends over 240 hectares from Schloss Wilhelmshöhe up to Herkules, Kassel's landmark. The 70-meter-high Herkules statue on a pyramid sits atop the Karlsberg. Every Wednesday and Sunday in summer, the famous water features cascade down the mountain — from Herkules through cascades and aqueducts to the Great Fountain, which shoots 50 meters into the air. This water spectacle from the 18th century still operates today without pumps, solely by gravity. Schloss Wilhelmshöhe houses one of the most important Rembrandt collections in the world and the antiquities collection with paintings by Rubens, Cranach, and Altdorfer. The Brothers Grimm lived and worked in Kassel, where they collected their world-famous fairy tales. The GRIMMWELT on the Weinberg is an interactive museum that presents the fairy tales and the life’s work of the Brothers in a modern and fascinating way — including the German Dictionary, their greatest scientific work. The Karlsaü, a baroque park along the Fulda, is Kassel's green lung and the most important documenta location: Here, permanent art installations stand alongside historical garden architecture.