Gottesaue Palace was designed by Johannes Schoch (1550 - 1631), the Strasbourg council architect at the time, and was conceived as a "pleasure house". Since its completion, it has experienced an extremely eventful history. After initial destruction during the Palatinate War of Succession in 1689, it burned down to the outer walls in 1735. As the Margraves of Baden-Durlach had no interest in this palace immediately after the founding of Karlsruhe, it was rebuilt in a reduced form with a two-storey structure and three-storey towers and over the next two centuries served initially as a fruit store for the margrave's chamber estate, from 1818 as barracks and later for the police, before it was destroyed in a bombing raid in May 1944.
For almost four decades, the ruins of the palace were a reminder of the horrors of war before it was rebuilt in 1982 for the purposes of the Karlsruhe University of Music. The exterior was reconstructed in such a way that the changes experienced during its history remained visible, while the interior was transformed into a modern building for use as a modern music academy, which nevertheless contains modern interpretations of Renaissance architecture.
After the building was completed in 1989, some of the surviving outbuildings such as the Fuchsbau and the Marstall were also fitted out for the University of Music, but the space was far from sufficient for the diverse requirements, so work began on an extension in 2009.
Since 2013, the "CampusOne - Schloss Gottesaue" campus for the Karlsruhe University of Music has offered sufficient space for the wide range of courses offered by the Karlsruhe University of Music with a new teaching building and a multimedia complex along with an institute wing (MUT). With the new concert hall, the Wolfgang Rihm Forum in the MUT, new opportunities have been created to expand and improve the diverse range of events.
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Numerous concerts by musicians from the University of Music take place throughout the year.
