The name of the oldest building in the "Place of Democracy" - the "Green Palace" - refers to the arcades on the park side once painted in green. It was built in 1565 as a private castle until duchess Anna Amalia converted it between 1761 and 1766 into a library accessible for the public. The Rococo hall is a part of its splendour and extends over three floors accommodating sculptures, paintings, globes, rare manuscripts and books. From 1797 up to his death in 1832, Goethe took over the administration of the library doubling the book inventories so that the library became one of the most extensive in Germany. In 1821, one of the two remaining towers of the former town fortification was included - the "Wide Altan to the Ilm". Today, the library consists of approximately one million volumes including medieval manuscripts, rare prints from the Reformation, valuable literature from the Enlightenment, the classical period and the Romantic as well as the literary legacies of Franz Liszt and Nietzsche. In the "Duchess Anna Amalia Library" one can find the most extensive Shakespeare-Library on the European continent with 10,500 volumes and a collection of "Faust", including 13,000 volumes.    back