The baroque Wittumspalais is located in the center of Weimar on Theaterplatz and, with its private and representative rooms, is a document of aristocratic residential culture in Weimar at the end of the 18th century. It was originally built for the Weimar Minister von Fritsch in 1767-1769.
From 1774, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach used it as her town residence after a devastating fire made the residential palace uninhabitable. The sumptuous dining room became the meeting place for social events for Weimar's prominent figures. For a time, the "Friday Society", founded by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, also met in the rooms of the palace. After the death of the Duchess, it became the guest quarters and meeting place of the Amalia Masonic Lodge. The first Thuringian state parliament met here and from 1848-1860 it housed the Reading Museum.
The Wittumspalais is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Classical Weimar", which is a unique testimony to the cultural epoch of Weimar Classicism and reflects Weimar's outstanding role as an intellectual center in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.