The master builder Johann Christoph Knöffel arranged the rooms dedicated for courtly ceremonies on the main floor of the west wing. He created groups of rooms in the Baroque style, which took into account the different requirements of courtly life. After Johann Gottfried Krohne took over the construction management in 1742, he modified the interior design planned by Knöffel, resulting in rooms that radiate the lightness of southern German rococo. This can be experienced in the so-called Red and Green Hall sequence - the apartments of the count and countess, as well as the centrally located Ballroom. The stucco work by Giovanni Battista Pedrozzi, the paintings and the carvings on the console tables, mirrors and door panels convey a representative overall impression of the rooms.
The framing of the Red room designed for state business had already been finished by Knoeffel in 1741 yet Krohne managed to animate the strict architecture by small changes. On the east wall he added an alcove for a stove, on the two narrow walls projections made of stucco marble. While the northern projection is characterized by a console table a stove is inserted into the northern one. Decorative paintings with pastoral scenes popular in the middle of that century are inserted into the wall above the oven. These paintings, including the oil paintings »spring« and »autumn« next to them and the overdoors were made by the court painter Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. In 1744 Prince Johann Friedrich of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt assigned the painter Lorenz Deisinger to paint a ceiling fresco with allegories of the virtues. It was not until ten years later that Karl Adolf Kaendler added the mirror frames and the console tables.
Krohne paid a special attention to the festive hall finished in around 1750. Today the room’s splendid interior architecture makes it one of the most important in Germany. The room’s dynamics produced by the concave and convex movements of the walls, the blue, blue grey, yellow and red brown shimmering of the stucco marble, the rocailles partly gold-plated, the plastic works and paintings make it an harmonious synthesis of arts. Pedrozzi did not only model the ceiling stucco according to Krohne’s plans but also the stucco decoration at the pilaster strips, the alcove of the stove and parts of the walls. In 1744 within a period of four weeks, the painter Deisinger created the gigantic ceiling fresco that depicts an assembly of the council of the Olympian gods. At the lower arcades one could not only inset bars but also hide the doors leading to the Red and the Green room. Above the arcades Krohne installed the courtly society’s loges above. A balcony carried by Atlases was reserved for the court orchestra.
It was only after 1750 that the construction works of the room units for Princess Bernhardine Christine Sophie of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt were initiated. After Krohne’s death in 1756 his successor Peter Caspar Schellschläger was able to finish the inner architecture until 1770 without having any bigger problems. In 1765/66 Johann Ernst Heinsenius made the two life-sized paintings of Prince Johann Friedrich and his wife on the narrow walls as well as the overdoors. In these six square oil paintings, ladies and their gentlemen occupy themselves with music, painting, statuary, architecture, astrology and poetry. Since the princess wasn’t able to use the Green room unit because of her early death in 1757 they were redesigned as music and parlours.
With this gallery facing the courtyard Knoeffel accomplished a comfortable access from the anterooms to all rooms of the west wing. The marble gallery is the main entry to the ballroom and therefore had to have an imposing appearance. With the polished marble floor the gallery receives a festive note. The greyish blue veined marble from a stone pit near Schwarzburg was laid in 1747.
