Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, a ruler of a small German state in the late eighteenth century, came back from travels in England and Italy and decided to turn his whole principality into a garden. The result, the Garden Realm of Dessau-Wörlitz, is now a World Heritage Site, and the parks of Wörlitz are its heart: an English landscape garden laid out around a lake fed by the Elbe, with canals, bridges, temples, a synagogue built as a temple of tolerance, and the palace at Wörlitz, designed by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff and regarded as one of the first neoclassical buildings in Germany.
The best way to see it is on foot or by one of the small ferries and gondolas that cross the lake, rather than rushing. Paths open onto carefully staged views: a Gothic House with stained glass, a little island called the Stein with a miniature volcano that was once made to erupt with fireworks for guests, and lawns that run down to the water under huge old oaks. It was meant to educate as well as delight, and you can still feel that Enlightenment confidence in the way everything is placed.
Nature does a lot of the work. The parks sit in the Middle Elbe floodplain, part of a biosphere reserve where beavers have their dams, white storks nest on rooftops in the villages and floodplain forest of oak and elm lines the river. Dikes keep the high water out of the gardens, and walking along them gives you long views over meadows. Mosquitoes can be lively on warm evenings.
The riding is flat and gentle, along tree lined avenues and dike roads that link Wörlitz with Oranienbaum, Vockerode and Dessau. Some village streets are cobbled, and the roads can be narrow with soft verges, so this is cruising country. A small cable ferry crosses the Elbe toward Coswig, which is a charming way to arrive or leave; it does not run in high water. Lutherstadt Wittenberg, where the Reformation began, is close enough to combine on the same day.
Coswig, about four kilometres away across the river, is the nearest town of size and has fuel, and Dessau-Rosslau has everything, including the Bauhaus buildings. Wörlitz itself is a small town of under two thousand people with cafés, ice cream and restaurants around the park entrances. Weekdays outside the summer holidays are much quieter.