The Metzler Bathing Temple - Lilite Temple
Street names such as "Schöne Aussicht" still bear witness to the charming banks of the Main, which also attracted the Frankfurt banker Friedrich Metzler to Offenbach in the summer. In 1798, he commissioned the French architect Nicolas Alexandre Salins de Montfort to build a bathing temple.
The basement of the building stood on granite surfaces that opened up to the Main like a grotto and provided direct access to the water. With the construction of the flood dam in the 19th century, the building lost its connection to the water. The first floor, with a floor area of 2590 square meters, is entered via a three-step open staircase into a rotunda as the entrance area. This was followed by a greenhouse and a hall. The rectangular building contains an oval hall that was once very elaborately designed and lavishly furnished. The temple was already known far beyond the borders of Offenbach as a place of interest during the owner's lifetime and underlined his wealth and exquisite taste.
The former bathing complex is part of a 10,000 square meter park that was created at the end of the 18th century from the gardens of the banking and business family of Jean Georg d'Orville (1747-1811) and Jeanne Rahel Bernard (1751-1822).
Incidentally, the building was given the name Lilipark because Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used to meet with his fiancée Anna Elisabeth Schönemann in the surrounding park in 1775. The park was not given the name Lilipark until the 100th anniversary of Goethe's death in 1932.
In 1951, the building and park became the property of the city of Offenbach and was open to the public for the first time. In 2004, the building, which was in need of renovation, was awarded to the Gelnhausen entrepreneur Volker Hohmann, who had the extensive stucco inside restored, among other things. In 2007, the building was open to the public again for the first time and Hohmann was awarded the Hessian Monument Protection Prize in 2008 for his exemplary restoration work. In 2016, the temple was sold to a management consultancy.
The building is considered to be Montfort's only work in the Rhine-Main region that has been preserved in its original state and is now a cultural monument.
