Bad Cannstatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Stuttgart Zoo - WilhelmaWe love watching animals, sure it's nicer in the wild… but then we wouldn’t visit this amazing zoo.
Some history around the Zoo:
- Originally planned as a private park for King Wilhelm I near his living castle Rosenstein.
- With buildings in Moorish style which were in fashion in the 19th century.
- They started to build in 1842 and named it Wilhelma after King Wilhelm.
- After King Wilhelm’s death in 1880 the public could access the park.
- After the war they used the area until 1949 to grow vegetables for the Stuttgart hospitals.
- Later the botanical garden re-opened for the public.
- 1951 they opened the African savana animals with Giraffes, antelopes and zebras and the pigeons for an exhibition
- 1952 the Indian Tiger and elephants came, after long discussion, they decided the animals can stay on after the exhibition and became the first German zoo with botanical garden. One of the original elephants is still today in the zoo.
- Over the next years more animals came in.
And what did we all do:- we were not only watching animals: we were walking through the amazing gate
- We had fun watching the monkeys, Paul liking all the big cats – seeing the different bears, going to "Africa": with the elephants, zebras, hippos and Rhinos.
- What I liked was when they had different animals in one area like the antelopes with the monkeys.
- between we admired the botanical garden: like the big old greenhouse with the tropical plants, the lilipond with lots of different colored lilies – nice walkways – old statues everywhere and then the Large Moorish Bathing house from 1846 sparkling out, walking up to the Belvedere (1851) where we had a cool look down…
- And back we went to see some more animals: like the reptiles, aquarium, birds… it was one amazing day we loved every moment off it.
2025-05-23