Paying admission to a park may seem remote from today's Florapark, but that is how this small garden in Düsseldorf-Unterbilk began. A private joint-stock company financed its creation, with entrance fees helping to cover maintenance. A palm house and social entertainments formed part of the attraction. The city took over in 1902. The pond and winding paths remain part of its character, while the palm house has long disappeared. Rather than an unchanged garden, Unterbilk has a place that records shifting ideas about what urban greenery should provide.
The change from a privately run destination to a public park suits a neighbourhood whose own name is younger than many of its historical connections. Unterbilk was originally part of Bilk; the municipal district history records its name on a map from 1891. Today the district lies between the city centre and the wider southern part of Düsseldorf. Hafen, the port district, adjoins it to the west as a separate administrative area. That distinction matters because images of the MedienHafen often dominate accounts of the surroundings, although they cannot stand for Unterbilk as a whole.
Beneath the park paths
Another green space tells the story of a different vanished boundary. Around Kaiserteich and Schwanenspiegel, Maximilian Weyhe landscaped land previously used for Düsseldorf's fortifications, incorporating remains of the defensive works into the park. The curving shores look nothing like a military plan, despite their close connection to one. The city's old boundaries had to come down before water and open ground could be used in a different way here.
Beside Kaiserteich stands the Ständehaus, which continues this pattern of change. Built between 1876 and 1880, it later housed the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1949 to 1988. Since 2002, it has formed part of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen as K21. Art is now exhibited where parliamentary business was once conducted. The building has not lost its representative presence; what has changed is the kind of public life it accommodates. The view across the pond holds these successive uses together rather than separating them into unrelated histories.
Between such substantial places, Unterbilk's streets have a character of their own. On Lorettostraße, stucco-fronted buildings rise above shops and places to eat. No single monument organises the view; it comes from the succession of houses and ground-floor premises. This is a different kind of urban setting from the park or former parliament: smaller in scale, with several reasons to visit a street and no shared institutional purpose.
Returning from there to Florapark gives its modest size another significance. The garden no longer needs a palm house to earn its place in the neighbourhood. As the Ständehaus changed function and former defensive ground became park paths, this garden also moved beyond its original purpose. Unterbilk's history rests not only in what has survived, but equally in the uses that have taken its place.
Sources and data
Checked and accessed: 2026-10-17. Principal original sources: the Floragarten account, Ständehaus gardens, the NRW parliament's Ständehaus history and the Lorettostraße account.