The Rastatt residential palace and the garden were built between 1700 and 1707 by the Italian court architect Domenico Egidio Rossi on behalf of Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm of Baden.
After the residence of Margrave Ludwig Wilhelm in Baden-Baden was burned down by French troops during the War of the Palatinate Succession, the structure of the destroyed castle no longer met the representative demands of the Baden ruler and he built a home for Princess Franziska Sibylla Augusta of Saxony, who was married to him in 1690. Lauenburg needed, was in place of his hunting lodge in the market town Rastatt a new residence was built.
The Corps de Logis hunting lodge, which was only built in 1697, was demolished to make way for the new castle. The village of Rastatt, located in the middle of the Rhine plain, was made a city in 1700 and the margrave moved his court to Rastatt. Rastatt Residential Palace is considered the oldest baroque residence on the Upper Rhine and was built based on the French model of Versailles, in which Ludwig Wilhelm's godfather, the Sun King Louis XIV, ruled absolutistly.
All of Europe looked at the power of the French monarch and tried to emulate him. So it is also to be understood why Ludwig Wilhelm spent the sum of approx. 12 million guilders for the Rastatt Castle in order to impress the regents in the German lands. Ludwig Wilhelm always tried to gain the electoral dignity, and when he had not been given the desired honors after his military successes in the Turkish wars and on the Rhine and the Polish royal dignity was no longer to be hoped for, he tried his claims to power by building the magnificent Rastatt Palace to underpin. In 1705, the margravial family moved into the not yet finished castle, Ludwig Wilhelm didn't have much of his castle himself, as he was always in the field most of the time and died as early as 1707 of a war wound. Margravine Franziska Sibylla Augusta commissioned the Bohemian master builder Johann Michael Ludwig Rohrer with the further expansion of the Rastatt palace.
The Rastatt Castle later served as a fortress command post in the 19th century.
