The Welfenschloss — built as a residence for King George V of Hanover in the 1860s, never lived in by him, and given over to a polytechnic in 1879 — is now the main building of Leibniz University. The neo-Renaissance facade, with a saxon horse statue out front, faces a long park grid called the Welfengarten.
The university takes its modern name from the polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who spent the last 40 years of his life in Hanover as the court librarian to the Welfs. He invented binary, contributed to calculus, and died here largely forgotten by his patrons.