Baden Marathon 2005: Kilometer 40
 

So passed the Zoo and then it was more streets to the 40K. At the 40K marker there was another service area, I drank a sports drink and ate a sports bar, munching a bit but throwing most of it away, my stomach was a mess. I fought my way done the street, too weary to enjoy the lively Samba music dancers. I remember them, their warm friendly smiles, one even shouted encouragement as I waddled through.

The square where the Samba dancers are doing there thing is Rondellplatz, mentioned in an 1858 description of the city as "a smaller, pleasant square, so named for its round shape adorned with beautiful buildings all of the same kind".

Rondellplatz was built thanks to the intersection of the city's north/south central axis with an old path on the line of the Erbprinzenstraße. It first appeared in official city plan drawn up in 1768. Smart residential buildings grew up on three sides of the square between 1800 and 1809.

The Karl-Friedrich-Strasse, beginning at the Schlossplatz and ending at Ettlinger Tor, was regarded as the Karlsruhe "via triumphalis", due partly to the Grand Duke Karl monument, very soon known only as the "Verfassungssäule" (or "constitution column"). The Verfassungssäule on Rondellplatz was built by Raufer, at first only with the cube and the two fountain basins, using Weinbrenner's design from 1823-24.

The obelisks were not added until several years later. The structure was probably assigned the purpose of serving as a monument for Grand Duke Karl and the constitution he introduced in 1818 in 1832.

Starting in 1803, Grand Duke Karl Friedrich had a palace built on the south-eastern terrain for the sons of his second wife, Reichs Countess Luise Karoline von Hochberg. Court gardeners had already laid out an ornamental and kitchen garden there back in 1800. The center of the palace is set apart from the rest by a six-pillared Corinthian entrance hall (the white pilliars in the left picture). The two side wings destroyed in the war were rebuilt in a modern style in 1963.