Kassel Audio Tours

Kassel is a city with two international identities that intersect only occasionally. Every five years since 1955, the documenta contemporary art exhibition has taken over the city, placing major works in public spaces, museums, and unexpected locations across town. documenta was founded by Arnold Bode as a deliberate attempt to reconnect Germany with international modernism that the Nazis had suppressed as degenerate, and its scale has grown until it is now arguably the most important exhibition in the contemporary art calendar. Between its editions, Kassel gets on quietly with being an industrially-grounded city in Hesse.

The Bergpark Wilhelmshohe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, is one of the most audacious landscape projects in European history.

The hill above the city was carved into a Baroque water feature over three centuries starting in 1696, with cascades, canals, fountains, and aqueducts descending 760 vertical meters from the hilltop Hercules monument, an eight-meter bronze figure on a 30-meter pyramid on top of an octagon on top of a ruined castle wall. On Wednesdays, Sundays, and public holidays in summer, the water flows and the cascade and Great Fountain demonstrate exactly how much engineering went into this hill.