The Baroque city palace is located in the center of Weimar at Theaterplatz. The long-time resident of the Wittumspalais was Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach (1739-1807, reign 1759-1775), one of the few female rulers in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. She acquired the palace in 1774 from her minister Jakob Friedrich Freiherr von Fritsch, after the residential castle had become uninhabitable due to a devastating fire. The gardens originally belonging to the Wittumspalais had to make way for the development of Theaterplatz at the beginning of the 19th century. In the 1870s, Grand Duke Carl Alexander had the Wittumspalais renovated and a museum for Anna Amalia established.