Wiesbaden Audio Tours

Wiesbaden has fifteen thermal springs, fourteen of them hot, and the Romans arrived to use them in 121 AD as Aquae Mattiacorum. By the 1890s the city had more millionaires than anywhere else in Germany, drawn by the waters, the casino, and the climate sheltered by the Taunus mountains. Dostoevsky came and gambled away his money. Goethe, Wagner, and Brahms visited in more organised fashion. The Casino in the Kurhaus, a severe neoclassical building from 1904 to 1907, is still operating and is considered one of the most beautiful in Europe.

Hesse chose Wiesbaden as its capital after 1945 precisely because the city had escaped the heavy bombing that flattened Frankfurt.

The result is an unusually intact collection of Wilhelmine-era spa architecture: the Wilhelmstrasse promenade, the Stadtschloss which is now the Hessian parliament, and the Russian Orthodox church of St Elizabeth on the Neroberg hill, built in 1847 for a Duchess who died young and is still used by the Russian-speaking community. The view from the Neroberg over the Rhine plain is particularly good in the late afternoon.