Schiller Park

The land became a public park in the middle of the 1800s, making it the second-oldest park in Columbus. It was known at first as Stewart's Grove, after Francis Stewart, who once owned the ground, and for decades it was simply the green space at the center of the growing German South Side of the city.

In 1891 the area's German residents rededicated it to Friedrich Schiller, the great German poet, playwright, and historian, unveiling a bronze statue of him before a crowd said to number some fifty thousand people. The name honored both the man and the culture the neighborhood had carried across the ocean. During the anti-German fever of the First World War the park was briefly renamed Washington Park, but the old name came back in 1930 and has stayed ever since.

At the park's center is a fishing pond, a quiet mirror of water where families cast lines and ducks glide, and beside it stands the Umbrella Girl fountain, a much-loved small sculpture of a girl holding an umbrella that has become a neighborhood emblem. Around them spread formal gardens and memorial plantings, including the Grace Highfield Memorial Garden dedicated in the 1990s, tended so carefully that the beds are a small attraction in their own right.

Threading it all together are the winding walking paths that give the park its shape and make it a favorite loop for runners and strollers. A granite promenade rings part of the grounds with quotations from Schiller's own writing cut into the stone, so a slow lap doubles as a walk through a little of the poet's philosophy, an unusually literary touch for a city park.

Schiller Park's best-known tradition is its summer of free outdoor theater. On the park's stage, a local company mounts full productions of Shakespeare and other plays on warm evenings, and neighbors and visitors alike bring blankets, chairs, and picnics to watch under the open sky at no charge. It has become one of the signature summer experiences of German Village and of Columbus.

The tradition fits the place perfectly. This was always a park built for gathering, whether for a band concert, a poetry unveiling, or a summer play, and the free theater keeps that communal spirit alive for a new century. Even on a night with no performance, the amphitheater and stage give the lawns a sense of being a shared outdoor room where the neighborhood comes together.

Schiller Park sits in the middle of German Village, just south of downtown Columbus, and the best way to enjoy it is to make it part of a walk through the district. Park on one of the surrounding brick streets and wander in through one of the entrances, then loop the paths, circle the pond, and find the Umbrella Girl and the Schiller statue.

Give yourself time to spill out of the park into the neighborhood around it, where restored cottages, iron fences, independent shops, cafes, and the famous Book Loft bookstore fill the historic blocks. In summer, check whether a play is on the schedule and come back in the evening with a blanket. It is a small, human-scaled gem, more a place to slow down and soak up a beloved old neighborhood than a big-ticket destination, and all the nicer for it.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.