Babelsberg Palace (German: Schloss Babelsberg) lies in the eponymous park and quarter of Potsdam, the capital of the German state of Brandenburg, near Berlin. For over 50 years it was the summer residence of Prince William, later Emperor William I and his wife, Augusta of the House of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

The building, designed in the English Gothic revival style, was built in two phases over the period 1835–1849. The contract to plan the palace was given to the architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Ludwig Persius and Johann Heinrich Strack.

On 22 September 1862 in the palace and adjoining park the discussion between King William I of Prussia and Otto von Bismarck took place that ended with the nomination of Bismarck as Minister President and Foreign Minister of Prussia.

The architecture of Babelsberg Palace formed the template for the construction of Kittendorf Palace between 1848 and 1853 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, by Schinkel's pupil, Friedrich Hitzig.

Since 1990, Babelsberg Palace has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.

Since 2013, the palace has been undergoing an intense renovation of its facades and interiors.

Babelsberg Palace

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Jagdschloss Glienicke is a hunting lodge in the Berlin district of Wannsee near Glienicke Bridge. Babelsberg and Glienicke Palace can be seen nearby. The castle is part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The construction of a small lodge was begun in 1682-84 under the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg, together with a cavalier house and stables, possibly according to plans designed by Charles Philippe Dieussart. The castle grounds were completed in 1693 during the reign of his successor Frederick III. When Elector Frederick rose to a King in Prussia in 1701, he had the castle lavishly rebuilt in a Baroque style. King Frederick William I of Prussia used it as a military hospital. In 1763, King Frederick the Great gave it as a present to Isaac Levin Joel, a wallpaper and carpet maker who used it for wallpaper manufacture. From 1827, it was owned by the civil servant and pedagogue Wilhelm von Türk, who turned it into an orphanage in 1832.

In 1859, the lodge was acquired by Prince Charles of Prussia, who hired the court architect Ferdinand von Arnim to renovate the castle in Neo-baroque style for his son Prince Frederick Charles. He also had an English landscape garden laid out, probably assisted by Peter Joseph Lenne. In 1889-92, Frederick Charles' son and heir Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia had the castle again rebuilt in the style of historicism by architect Albert Geyer, who expanded the central block of the building and added a tower.

In 1939, the castle came into possession of the city of Berlin and was used as a storing location for Universum Film AG. After World War II, the castle first housed a cadet school of the Soviet army; in 1947 it became a youth hostel. Additionally, many families found a new home there after the Russians cleared out Berlin and Neubabelsberg. One of the families was the family of an ex-mayor of Berlin. Castle and park also served as a film backdrop, e.g. for Mädchen in Uniform starring Romy Schneider in 1958.

From 1961, the castle was located immediately adjacent to the berlin Wall. In 1962-64, Max Taut rebuilt the castle by adding a glass bay to the two lower floors. Between 1964 and 2003, the castle was used as a youth meeting place. Since 2003, the castle is home of the Sozialpädagogische Fortbildung Jagdschloss Glienicke.

On March 31, 2003, the south wing of the castle caught fire as a result of faulty wiring. Because the castle had no fire alarm and its water intakes had become clogged with silt, the resulting damage was particularly severe and has yet to be fully repaired. A rebuild in line with accepted conservation practice began in November 2005. The topping-out ceremony was on August 23, 2006. The awarding authority was the Senate Office For Education, Science and Research. The price for the rebuilding of the roof was approximately €400,000.

Jagdschloss Glienicke

Glienicke Palace (German: Schloss Glienicke) is a palace located on the peninsula of Berlin-Wannsee, Germany. It was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for Prince Carl of Prussia in 1826.

The palace is situated near the Glienicke Bridge, on the Bundesstraße 1 across from the Glienicke Hunting Lodge. Around the palace is Park Glienicke.

It was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for Prince Carl of Prussia in 1826. The building, originally merely a cottage, was turned into a summer palace in the late Neoclassical style. Particularly striking are two golden lion statues in front of the frontage, which were also designed by Schinkel. The lions are versions of the Medici lions from the Villa Medici. In the palace are antique objets d'art, which the Prince brought back from his trips.

Since 1990, Glienicke Palace and the park have been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. The palace's park is now called the Volkspark Glienicke.

Glienicke Palace

The Marmorpalais (or Marble Palace) is a former royal residence in Potsdam, near Berlin in Germany, built on the grounds of the extensive Neuer Garten on the shores of the Heiliger See (lake). The palace was commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm II (Frederick William II of Prussia) and designed in the early Neoclassical style by the architects Carl von Gontard and Carl Gotthard Langhans. The palace remained in use by the Hohenzollern family until the early 20th century. It served as a military museum under communist rule, but has since been restored and is once again open to the public.

The Marmorpalais was designed by the architects Carl von Gontard and (from 1789) Carl Gotthard Langhans, the designer of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

The Marmorpalais was reserved as a summer residence for the private use of the king, who had an artistic temperament. With this new construction the nephew and successor of Frederick the Great dissociated himself from his childless uncle, whom he disliked and who favored earlier Baroque and Rococo forms.

The red brick Marmorpalais was originally a two-story square building. A fine view of the surrounding gardens and lakes is possible from a round pavilion on the flat roof of the cubical structure. Among other buildings, the little castle on the Pfaueninsel in the Havel river was constructed as an eye-catcher. A stairway and gallery accessed from the roof lead into the belvedere. Sculptured putti carrying a basket of fruit decorate the tip of the pavilion. The palace got its name from the grey and white Silesian marble used for the decorative elements and partitioning structures.

Boat moorings could be approached by members of the court via a large terrace on the lake side of the palace, from which a stairway led down to the water. The king enjoyed extensive boat rides; even Charlottenburg Palace on the Spree river in Berlin could be reached by boat from here.

On the nearby lake shore is to be found the palace kitchen, which was built 1788-1790 by Langhans in the romantic style of a half-sunken classical temple ruin. An underground corridor provides a connection with an artificial grotto on the ground floor of the palace which served as a dining room in summertime.

The Marmorpalais is closely associated with Wilhelmine Enke (also spelled Encke), known popularly as "Beautiful Wilhelmine". As Frederick William II's mistress she had a great influence on the interior decoration of the palace; in 1796 she was made Countess Lichtenau.

After only a few years of use the palace was considered to be too small, and in 1797 construction started on two side wings designed by Michael Philipp Boumann. The architect connected these single-story, rectangular extensions to the right and left of the main entrance on the garden side of the palace with galleries in the form of quarter circles. The marble required to decorate these extensions was obtained by removing Frederick William's colonnades from Park Sanssouci and incorporating the pillars in the new building. This garden architecture designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff had originally stood on the main boulevard connecting Sanssouci Palace and the New Palace.

When the king died in November 1797, just the shell of the extensions had been completed. His son and successor, Frederick William III of Prussia, being uninterested in the project, only had the exterior finished.

This was still the situation in the 1830s when Prince Wilhelm (William), later Kaiser William I, and his spouse Augusta moved into the Marmorpalais while they awaited the completion of their new residence at Babelsberg Palace (1833-1835-1849). His brother, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, known as "a royal nostalgic romanticist", commissioned the architect Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse to complete the unfinished interior structure and fittings for the two side extensions between 1843 and 1848. Frescos with scenes from the Nibelungenlied were added to the outside to decorate the colonnade walls.

The building's technical and sanitary facilities were updated when Prince Wilhelm (William), later Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his family lived in the Marmorpalais from 1881 until he acceded to the throne in 1888.

The last royal inhabitants of the Marmorpalais were Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his spouse Cecilie, who lived there for most of the year between 1904 and 1917, when they moved to nearby Cecilienhof Palace, built for them in the Neuer Garten.

After the German monarchy came to an end in 1918, the Marmorpalais was placed under the control of the Prussian palaces administration in 1926 as a result of a settlement between the Free State of Prussia and the Hohenzollern family regarding property claims. It opened as a palace museum in 1932, with restored interior furnishings from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Toward the end of World War II the palace suffered serious damage when the north wing was hit by an incendiary bomb, and the main building by a grenade. Its condition further deteriorated after the war, over a period of time when the Soviet Red Army used it as a venue for an officers' mess, beginning in 1946.

In 1961, the East German GDR Army Museum was established in the building. Inside, historic military equipment, uniforms and historic documents were on display and on the outside, canon, a T-34 tank, a high-speed patrol boat, a MiG fighter airplane and a rocket were exhibited. The weapons were removed in 1989.

Starting in 1984, the National People's Army made plans for a fundamental restoration as the building continued to fall into disrepair. These plans came to fruition in 1988 and the work continued in late autumn 1990 after the return of the property to the palaces administration. Since 14 April 2006 all 40 rooms have been renovated and opened to the public. Repair of the exterior surface was completed in autumn 2009 after several years of restoration work.

Beginning in 1790, Carl Gotthard Langhans was commissioned with designing the interior rooms. Marble fireplaces and antique sculpture were a prominent feature in decisions about the decorative furnishings; these had been purchased in Italy for the Marmorpalais by the architect Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff. This Saxon nobleman, who was already famous for planning and executing early Neoclassical buildings in Dessau-Wörlitz, had been invited to work in Berlin in 1787.

On the ground floor of the main building there is a vestibule leading to a stairway extending the entire height of the building. Behind it is a large room designed as a grotto and used in the summertime as a dining room. This room is situated on the eastern side of the palace and faces the lake. Because of its shady location and the calm, cool effect of its greyish blue marble paneling its occupants enjoyed a pleasant room climate. On either side of this middle axis there were six private rooms serving as royal living quarters.

Upstairs, the rooms are grouped around the central marble stairway. The largest room, the concert hall, extended across the entire lake side of the palace. It was later used as a salon during the reign of the German Kaisers. The furnishings and decorative architecture of the rooms reflected a taste for the Neoclassical style, the only exception being the so-called Oriental cabinet on the upper floor, which Langhans designed as a Turkish tent with a divan.

Since 1990, the Marmorpalais has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.

Marmorpalais

Cecilienhof Palace (German: Schloss Cecilienhof) is a palace in Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany built from 1914 to 1917. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire until the end of World War I. It is famous for having been the location of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, in which the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States took important decisions affecting the shape of post World War II Europe and Asia. Cecilienhof has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.

Cecilienhof is located in the northern part of the large Neuer Garten park, close to the shore of the Jungfernsee lake. The park was laid out from 1787 at the behest of King Frederick William II of Prussia, modelled on the Wörlitz Park in Anhalt-Dessau. Frederick William II also had the Marmorpalais (Marble Palace) built within the Neuer Garten, the first Brandenburg palace in the Neoclassical style erected according to plans designed by Carl von Gontard and Carl Gotthard Langhans, which was finished in 1793. Other structures within the park close to Schloss Cecilienhof include an orangery, an artificial grotto (Muschelgrotte (de)), the "Gothic Library", and the Dairy in the New Garden, also constructed for King Frederick William II.

The park was largely redesigned as an English landscape garden according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné from 1816 onwards, with lines of sight to nearby Pfaueninsel, Glienicke Palace, Babelsberg Palace, and the Sacrow Church.

Since the Marmorpalais, which had been the traditional Potsdam residence of the Hohenzollern crown prince, had become inadequate for current tastes, Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the establishment of a fund for constructing a new palace at Potsdam for his oldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm (William) and his wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 19 December 1912. After their marriage in 1905, Wilhelm and Cecilie had previously lived at the Marmorpalais for most of the year and at the Berlin Kronprinzenpalais in winter. In 1911, the Crown Prince had been appointed commander of the Prussian 1. Leibhusaren-Regiment and moved to Danzig-Langfuhr.

On 13 April 1914 the Imperial Ministry and the Saalecker Werkstätten signed a building contract that envisaged a completion date of 1 October 1915 and a construction cost of 1,498,000 Reichsmark for the new palace. The architect was Paul Schultze-Naumburg, who visited the couple in Danzig to work out the design for the palace. It was based on English Tudor style buildings, arranged around several courtyards featuring half-timbered walls, bricks and 55 different decorative chimney stacks. With the start of World War I in August 1914, construction stopped but was resumed in 1915.

The palace was designed in such a way as to be inhabitable for most of the year. Its low structure and multiple courts conceal the fact that it boasts a total of 176 rooms. Besides the large Ehrenhof in the centre, which was used only for the arrival and departure of the Crown Prince and his wife, there is a smaller garden court, the Prinzengarten, and three other courts around which the various wings of the building are arranged.

The "public" rooms were located in the centre part on the ground floor, around a central great hall, while above on the first floor were the "private" bedroom, dressing rooms and bathrooms. The living area of the great hall also features a massive wooden stairway made of oak. This was a gift from the city of Danzig. The ground floor rooms included an area for the Crown Prince with smoking room, library and breakfast room as well as an area for his wife with music salon, writing room and a room designed like a cabin on an ocean liner. The latter was used by Cecilie as a breakfast room. Like some of the other rooms it was designed by Paul Ludwig Troost, who also designed actual interiors of ocean liners for the Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping line.

The palace was finished in August 1917. It was named Cecilienhof after the Duchess and the couple moved in immediately. Cecilie gave birth at Cecilienhof to her youngest child, Cecilie of Prussia (de) who was born on 5 September 1917. However, when the revolution erupted in November 1918, for security reasons Cecilie and her six children moved for a while to the Neues Palais, where the wife of Emperor Wilhelm II, Empress Augusta Victoria was living. After the Empress followed her husband into exile in the Netherlands, Cecilie remained in Potsdam and returned to Cecilienhof where she lived until 1920. As the property of the Hohenzollern family had been confiscated after the revolution, Cecilie then had to move her residence to an estate at Oels in Silesia, which was a private property. Only her sons Wilhelm (William) and Louis Ferdinand remained at Cecilienhof while they attended a public Realgymnasium (school) in Potsdam. Crownprince Wilhelm had gone into exile in the Netherlands on 13 November 1918 and was interned on the island of Wieringen. He was allowed to return to Germany—as a private citizen—on 9 November 1923. In June 1926, a referendum on expropriating the former ruling Princes of Germany without compensation failed and as a consequence, the financial situation of the Hohenzollern family improved considerably. A settlement between the state and the family made Cecilienhof property of the state but granted a right of residence to Wilhelm and Cecilie. This was limited in duration to three generations.

Wilhelm subsequently broke the promise he had made to Gustav Stresemann, who allowed him to return to Germany, to stay out of politics. He supported the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, who visited Cecilienhof three times, in 1926, in 1933 (on the "Day of Potsdam") and in 1935. However, when Wilhelm realized that Hitler had no intention of restoring the monarchy, their relationship cooled. After the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944, Hitler had Wilhelm placed under supervision by the Gestapo and had Cecilienhof watched.

In January 1945, Wilhelm left Potsdam for Oberstdorf for a treatment of his gall and liver problems. Cecilie fled in early February 1945 as the Red Army drew closer to Berlin, without being able to salvage much in terms of her possessions. At the end of the war, Cecilienhof was seized by the Soviets.

The Potsdam Conference (officially the "Berlin Conference") took place from 17 July to 2 August 1945. It was the third and longest summit between the heads of government of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, the major forces in the anti-Hitler-coalition that had just won the war after VE day, 8 May 1945. The conference was mainly organized by the Soviets. Although the British prime minister Winston Churchill had refused to hold a summit "anywhere within the current Soviet military zone", US President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had agreed in late May 1945 to meet "near Berlin". As Berlin itself had been too heavily damaged by Allied bombing and street-to-street fighting, Cecilienhof in Potsdam was selected as the location for the conference. The delegations were to be housed in the leafy suburb of Potsdam-Babelsberg, which had suffered only slight damage in the bombing raids and also offered the advantage that the streets to the conference venue were easy to guard.

Soviet soldiers repaired the streets connecting Babelsberg to Cecilienhof, built a pontoon bridge to replace the Glienicker Brücke which had been destroyed during the last days of the war, planted trees, bushes and flower beds—including the Soviet red star in the Ehrenhof of the palace. At Cecilienhof, 36 rooms and the great hall were renovated and furnished with furniture from other Potsdam palaces. The furniture of Wilhelm and Cecilie had been removed by the Soviets and stored at the Dairy.

The main rooms used for the conference were as follows:

Cecilie's music salon—White Salon, used by the Soviet delegation as a reception room (on the first day of the conference, this was also the site of a buffet Stalin provided to the other delegations).

Cecilie's writing room—Red Salon, used by the Soviet delegation as a study.

Great hall—this was the conference hall, fitted by the Soviets with a round table of 10 feet diameter (probably custom-made by a Moscow-based furniture company).

Wilhelm's smoking room—study of the American delegation.

Wilhelm's library—study of the British delegation.

Wilhelm's breakfast room—possibly used as a secretary's office.

However, according to the official guide to the palace, evidence has recently emerged that indicates that the current designation of the British and American studies may have been switched by the Soviets after the conference.

After the conference ended, Soviet troops used the palace as a clubhouse. It was handed over to the state of Brandenburg and in 1952 a memorial for the Conference was set up in the former private chambers of Wilhelm and Cecilie. The government of Eastern Germany also used the palace as a reception venue for state visits. The rest of the complex became a hotel in 1960. Some of the rooms were used by the ruling party (SED) for meetings.

However, after 1961, a part of the Neuer Garten was destroyed to build the southwest section of the Berlin Wall (as part of the Grenzsicherungsanlagen) which ran along the shore of Jungfernsee. Beginning in 1985, the VEB Reisebüro (state-owned travel agency) modernised the hotel.

Today, parts of Cecilienhof are still used as a museum and as a hotel. In 1990 it became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site called Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin. The private rooms were opened to the public in 1995 after comprehensive restoration work. Queen Elizabeth II visited Cecilienhof on 3 November 2004. On 30 May 2007, the palace was used for a summit by the G8 foreign ministers. In 2011, Schloss Cecilienhof was awarded the European Heritage Label. The redesigned permanent exhibition on the Potsdam Conference was reopened in April 2012.



Cecilienhof

The Potsdam City Palace (German: Potsdamer Stadtschloss) was a historical building in Potsdam, Germany. It was the second official residence (the winter residence) of the margraves and electors of Brandenburg, later kings in Prussia, kings of Prussia and German emperors. The original building stood on the Old Market Square in Potsdam, next to the Church of St. Nicholas (Nikolaikirche) and the Old Townhall.

A partial reconstruction with a historic facade including numerous original components and a modern interior was completed in late 2013. The building has since served to house the parliament of the federal state of Brandenburg.

The Baroque palace was constructed on the site of an earlier fortification from 1662 to 1669 under Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, and was rebuilt from 1744 to 1752 by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff under Friedrich II, who performed additional interior decoration. It stood as one of the most important examples of Frederician Rococo.

During an Allied bombing attack on 14 April 1945 the City Palace was bombed and burned out, although 83 per cent of the building structure survived. However, the ruling communist party (official name: Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED) demolished the ruin in 1960 for ideological reasons. The formerly cohesive Old Market lost its face. The only portion of the palace left standing was the stables, which today houses the Potsdam Museum of Film.

In 1991 construction of a modern theatre, which had been initially planned under the GDR, began on the site of the City Palace. However, the project stalled. Although some steel framework was erected, it was subsequently torn down.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the ruling Left Party (the successor to the communists) twice rejected initiatives to reconstruct the Palace. However, in 1996 strong encouragement was provided by the “Potsdam Project” run by the Summer Academy for Young Architects of the Prince of Wales’s London Institute of Architecture. The Project recommended reinstatement of the historical footprint of the Palace via a partial reconstruction.

A Berlin lawyer and real estate entrepreneur, Michael Schöne, who bought and renovated old buildings, was troubled by the wasteland of the site, believing that Potsdam would never work until its core was restored. In 1996 he initiated the first attempt at reconstruction, with the launch of a fund. The vision was that the new palace would be home to galleries, museums and cafes or upstairs apartments and offices. However, opposition from various Potsdam cliques defeated the project and the collected monies were returned to the donors.

However, shortly afterwards the PDS politician Birgit Müller, then chairman of the City Council, agreed to support the reconstruction of the main portal of the Palace, the Fortuna Gate. It was a small window in time, as the PDS would soon officially oppose reconstruction. The SPD under Matthias Platzeck also supported Schöne. In 1996 the City Castle Association was established, with Schöne as chairman. Large donations by the television presenter Günther Jauch and the Federal Association of the German Cement Industry, led by Jürgen Lose, made the rebuilding of the Fortuna Gate possible. It was completed in October 2002. The structure was seen as the bait to encourage rebuilding of the Palace itself, which was still opposed to by the political Left.

In a dramatic night vote, in 2000 the Potsdam City Council voted for reconstruction, but this had real no support at the state level, and at the time there was a recession. When the economy improved, in May 2005 there was agreement that the parliament would relocate from its GDR building to a new parliament building in the external forms of the historic palace. Despite this, the reconstruction still had strong opponents. Rainer Speer of the SPD, then finance minister, repeatedly tried to stop the project.

In 2007 a referendum was held to decide three building options for the remainder of the site. The Left Party was stunned when almost 50 percent of voters turned out (far more than for elections for the European parliament), and voted decisively for reconstruction of the Palace. "It’s not what we wanted," the Left Party's parliamentary leader Hans-Jürgen Scharfenberg stated following the vote, "But we’ll respect people’s decisions."

An architectural competition was launched. The initial plan was for only the principal northern facade to be an historical reconstruction, with the wings and interior modern, and the City Palace Association feared "cost optimised architecture" would dispense with many of the historical elements. Two days before the final meeting of the jury competition, the Prime Minister received a call from software mogul Hasso Plattner offering a donation of €20 million to enable the entire historic facade to be reconstructed – at the time, the largest donation ever gifted in Germany by an individual. Plattner later provided a further large donation to enable the roof to be clad in the original copper. The Palace was completed in late 2013. The interior, which is modern, houses the parliament of the federal state of Brandenburg.

City Palace (Potsdam)

Sanssouci

The New Chambers in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, were constructed for King Frederick the Great of Prussia from 1771 to 1775.

The building, which stands to the west of Sanssouci Palace, serves as a complement to the Picture Gallery, which lies to the east. Both buildings flank the summer palace.

The chambers replaced an orangery, which had been built at that site in 1745 on plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff and held the terraces' potted plants during the winter months. Ramps, on which the tubs were taken in and out, serve as reminders of the building's original use.

Master builder Georg Christian Unger was commissioned to turn the orangery building into a guesthouse.

The building's basic elements were left alone, as were its size and floor-to-ceiling french doors. The most obvious change was the addition of a cupola on the middle section. The similarities between the architecture of the New Chambers and that of the Picture Gallery are such that the both buildings can be mistaken for the other.

The real alteration occurred in the interior, where seven guest rooms and two ballrooms were created. The building is a highpoint of the late style of Frederican Rococo, even though classicism was already largely set as the prevailing taste of the period.

The guest rooms were decorated differently with lacquered, painted, or inlaid cabinets, whose costly inlays of native woods decorated the entire wall from the ceiling to the floor.

For paintings, the guest rooms have views of Potsdam, which document the town's design under Frederick the Great and were specially commissioned for the guesthouse by the king.

In the middle of the building, under the cupola, lies the largest room, the Jasper Room.

The ballroom's walls are gloriously decorated with red jasper and grey Silesian marble. The same colors are found in the floor design. The ceiling painting Venus mit ihrem Gefolge (Venus with her Retinue) was created in 1774 by Johann Christoph Frisch.

Decorated panels from both antiquity and the 18th century were attached to the background of red jasper.

The second, large ballroom, located in the eastern part of the New Chambers is the Ovid Gallery, decorated in the style of French mirrored rooms.

On the long side of the room is a mirror stretching almost to the ceiling, across from which, on the garden side, are french doors.

Frederick wished that the walls be decorated with gilded reliefs of the liaisons of the ancient gods, which had been told by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The room's rich decoration comes from the workshop of the Bayreuther sculptors and brothers Johann David Räntz and Johann Lorentz Wilhelm Räntz.

New Chambers (Sanssouci)

The Orangery Palace (German: Orangerieschloss) is a palace located in the Sanssouci Park of Potsdam, Germany. also known as the New Orangery on the Klausberg, or just the Orangery. It was built on behest of the "Romantic on the Throne", King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Frederick William IV of Prussia) from 1851 to 1864.

The building of the Orangery began with a plan for a high street or triumph street. It was to begin at the triumph arch, east of Sanssouci Park, and end at the Belvedere on the Klausberg. The difference in elevation was to be balanced with viaducts.

With reference to the north side of the Picture Gallery and the New Chambers from the time of Frederick the Great, Frederick William IV sketched out more new buildings, which would decorate his two kilometer long Via Tiumphalis.

Because of the political unrest of the period (March Revolution) and lack of funding, the gigantic project never materialized. Only the Orangery Palace and the Triumphtor were ever realized.

The construction of the Orangery Palace began after preliminary drawings by Frederick William IV. The architects Friedrich August Stüler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse (de) were commissioned to turn the drawings into a reality.

The building, with its 300 meter long front, was built in the style of the Italian Renaissance, after the image of the Villa Medici in Rome and the Uffizi in Florence.

The middle building with its twin towers is the actual palace. This building is joined to the 103 meter long and 16 meter wide Plant Hall, with its almost ceiling-to-floor windows on the south side. In the western hall, the original floor duct heating system is still present and functioning. In the alcoves along the garden side of the castle annex, there are allegorical figures of the months and seasons. In the corner building at the end of the Orangery Hall were the royal apartments and the servants' quarters.

In front of the peristyle Elisabeth, Frederick William IV's wife, had a statue of the king erected in Memoriam after his death in 1861.

Behind the portico, in the middle building, lies the over two-story-tall Raffael Hall. It was based on the Sala Regia in the Vatican. Over a large skylight in the high clouded ceiling, light falls into the Museum Hall. On the red silk covered walls, hang over fifty copies of Renaissance paintings. Frederick William IV inherited the images from his father, King Frederick William III of Prussia, and assembled them here.

The royal apartments were outfitted in the second Rococo style, connected to both sides of the Raffael Hall. They were intended as guest rooms for Tsar Nicholas I and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna. The Tsarina was the favorite sister of Frederick William IV, Charlotte, who gave up her name along with her homeland when she married.

Between 1949 and 2010 the Palace also housed premises of the Brandenburgian State Main Archive in its eastern wing.

The gardens were styled after those of the Italian Renaissance by the garden architect, Peter Joseph Lenné. In the west, below the annex, he designed the Paradise Garden in 1843/1844. It contains many exotic flowers and foliage plants. The atrium, a small building in middle of the compound, designed in the ancient style, was built on plans by Ludwig Persius in 1845. The current Botanical Garden, with its systematically arranged planting, is used by the University of Potsdam as a teaching garden.

The Norse and Sicilian Gardens lie to the east. These completely different garden sections were laid out by Lenné between 1857 and 1860. The dark, effective Norse Garden, with its pines, was to have been an element of the planned triumph street.

The Sicilian Garden, with its palm tubs, myrtles, laurels, flowers, arcades, and fountains, runs southward.

Since 1990, the Orangery has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.

Orangery Palace

Charlottenhof Palace or Charlottenhof Manor (German: Schloss Charlottenhof) is a former royal palace located southwest of Sanssouci Palace in Sanssouci Park at Potsdam, Germany. It is best known as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia). Today it is maintained by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.

The park area with its various buildings can be traced back to the 18th century. After it had changed hands several times, King Frederick William III of Prussia bought the land that borders the south of Sanssouci Park and gave it to his son Frederick William and his wife Elisabeth Ludovika for Christmas in 1825.

The Crown Prince charged the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel with the remodeling of an already existing farm house and the project was completed at low cost from 1826 through 1829. In the end, Schinkel, with the help of his student Ludwig Persius, built a small Neoclassical palace on the foundations of the old farm house in the image of a Roman villa.

With designs he created himself the artistically inclined Crown Prince participated in the planning process for the palace and surrounding park. He referred to this summer residence as "Siam", which at the time was considered "the Land of the Free", and to himself jokingly as the "Siam House architect".

Officially the palace and park were named "Charlottenhof" in honor of Maria Charlotte von Gentzkow who had owned the property from 1790 to 1794.

The interior design of the ten rooms is still largely intact. The furniture, for the most part designed by Schinkel himself, is remarkable for its simple and cultivated style.

The palace's most distinctive room is the tent room fashioned after a Roman Caesar's tent. In the tent room both ceiling and walls are decorated with blue and white striped wallpaper and the window treatments and bed tent and coverings continue that design. The room was used as a bedroom for companions and guests.

The blue and white theme is continued throughout on the palace's window shutters, it seems, in deference to the Bavarian heritage of then crown princess Elisabeth.

Between 1835 and 1840 the explorer and world traveler Alexander von Humboldt was invited and stayed in the tent room during the summer months.

The landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné was charged with the design of the Charlottenhof gardens.

He completely recreated the originally flat and partly marshy area into an English garden with trees, lawn and water features. He also linked the new park at Charlottenhof to the older one at Sanssouci from the time of Frederick the Great.

Since 1990, Charlottenhof Palace has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.

Charlottenhof Palace

The New Palace (German: Neues Palais) is a palace situated on the western side of the Sanssouci park in Potsdam, Germany. The building was begun in 1763, after the end of the Seven Years' War, under King Friedrich II (Frederick the Great) and was completed in 1769. It is considered to be the last great Prussian baroque palace.

The building of the palace commenced at the end of the Seven Years' War, to celebrate Prussia’s success. The war is also variably referred to as the Third Silesian War, owing to the dispute over Silesia. In an architectural form, Frederick the Great sought to demonstrate the power and glories of Prussia attributing it as fanfaronade, an excess of splendor in marble, stone and gilt.

For the King, the New Palace was not a principal residence, but a display for the reception of important royals and dignitaries. Of the over 200 rooms, four principal gathering rooms and a theater were available for royal functions, balls and state occasions. During his occasional stays at the palace, Frederick occupied a suite of rooms at the southern end of the building, composed of two antechambers, a study, a concert room, a dining salon and a bedroom, among others.

After the death of Frederick the Great in 1786, the New Palace fell into disuse and was rarely occupied as a residence or entertainment venue. However, starting in 1859 it became the summer residence of the German Crown Prince, Frederick William, later German Emperor Frederick III. The palace was the preferred residence of Frederick and his empress, Victoria, throughout the 99 Days’ Reign. During the short reign of Frederick III, the palace was renamed "Friedrichskron Palace" (Schloss Friedrichskron) and a moat was dug around the palace. The ascension of Wilhelm II saw renovation and restoration within the palace being carried out with the installation of steam heating, bathrooms in state apartments and electrification of the chandeliers which Frederick the Great had collected from across Europe. Until 1918, it remained the preferred residence of Wilhelm II and the Empress Augusta.

After the November Revolution and the abdication of Wilhelm II, the New Palace became a museum and remained such until the Second World War. Much of its furniture had been removed and taken to the residence of the exiled Wilhelm II at Huis Doorn in the Netherlands. Some of the palace’s treasures were looted by Soviet Army at the end of the Second World War. The majority of the furnishings were discovered by the Dutch in the 1970s, still in their original packing crates, and returned to Potsdam. Because of this, and because it escaped bombing in the Second World War, the palace today looks much as it did in 1918.

While Frederician Rococo was established at Sanssouci, Frederick the Great had the New Palace built in varying forms of baroque architecture and decoration, with some deviations. The King preferred rococo and baroque to the Neoclassical style that was already taking hold of Europe at the time as the preference of many monarchs. Architect Johann Gottfried Büring, with the aid of Heinrich Ludwig Manger (de), was assigned with the task of planning the New Palace and had already demonstrated success with the completion of the Chinese Teahouse and the Picture Gallery in the Sanssouci royal park.

After disagreements over the design of the palace, in 1764 the design of the palace was totally vested in the architect Carl von Gontard. The three-story façade had already begun to rise around unfinished interiors, as construction had steadily been underway. With 220 metre east and west façades, the centre portion of the palace was crowned with an enormous dome, at the top of which were placed the Three Graces supporting the Prussian royal crown. The dome is not only architectural, it provides an attic area under the supporting timbers which carry it. Additionally, the north and south auxiliary wings are crowned with domes surmounted by gilded eagles. Between the pilasters, what appears to be brick is actually a painted effect, leaving only the King’s south wing with exposed brick. Repointing the mortar of the joints proved to be an arduous and expensive task, therefore Frederick had the brick covered in stucco and painted in such a way that even tourists today are fooled by the deceptive finish. Over 400 sandstone statues and figures adorn the palace and auxiliary buildings, created by many notable sculptors, namely Johann Peter Benckert, Johann Matthias Gottlieb Heymüller (de), the brothers Johann David and Johann Lorenz Räntz and others.

In addition to the royal apartments, four grand staterooms (festival halls) occupy the central portion of the palace. On the ground floor is the Grotto Hall, attributed to Carl von Gontard, with walls encrusted with shells, stones, marble, quartz and semi-precious stones, which were enriched in the 19th century. Part of the design of the Groto Hall is a marble floor depicting marine animals and plants and an 1806 ceiling painting, Venus and Amor, the Three Graces and Putti. Attributed to Johann Gottfried Niedlich, the painting has replaced an earlier work. Niches around the room contain statuary and fountains, with cut crystal chandeliers hung in the arches.

The southern Marble Gallery, on the ground floor, leads to the apartments of the King. Decorated in white marble and red jasper, it is one of the most important examples of rococo decoration within the palace. Six windows are set opposite to mirrored niches, which reflect light throughout the room. Three large crystal chandeliers are suspended from a heavily gilt ceiling bearing three large paintings; Night, Morning and Midday by the artist Bernhard Rode. 18th-century chairs upholstered in leather, vases of faux Egyptian porphyry and console tables furnish the gallery.

Situated directly over the Grotto Hall is the Marble Hall, the largest of the festival halls, which was used variously as a ballroom and as a banqueting hall. Rising over two floors, the hall overlooks the eastern parterres and the axial vista leading to Sanssouci. The richly gilt, curved ceiling rises into the attic area under the great copper dome. The painting in the center of this ceiling, The Induction of Ganymede in Olympus, was created in 1769 by Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo. With a surface of 240 square meters, it is the largest canvas ceiling painting north of the Alps. Four enormous paintings commissioned before the Seven Years' War adorn the marble walls of the hall. Positioned at the pilasters are twelve statues, depicting eight Brandenburg Prince-electors and four famous "emperors": Julius Caesar, Constantine, Charlemagne and Rudolph II. A balcony with an intricate gilt iron railing overlooks the hall from the third floor.

The Upper Gallery within the palace is situated to the south of the Marble Hall and is directly above the Marble Gallery on the ground floor. The ceiling is painted in hues of rose, antique yellow and white, accented with heavy gilt ornamentation. The ever-popular Neoclassicism of Europe at the time can be seen in the roundels positioned above and on the doors. Six large Italian baroque paintings hang opposite the windows of the gallery. All that remains of the original furnishings are three marble mosaic console tables and upholstered settees.

After the revolution of 1918, which overthrew the monarchy, the Weimar Republic allowed 34 train loads of furniture from the palace to be sent to the exiled Wilhelm II at Huis Doorn in the Netherlands. This is the reason why the furniture in the upper rooms formerly lived in by Wilhelm II and his consort Empress Augusta Viktoria comes from elsewhere.

Occupying two levels above the ground floor, the Theatre dates to the Frederick the Great’s reign in the eighteenth century and is still in use today. Rococo in style, the theatre makes heavy use of red and white with gilded accents. It can be seen as peculiar given its location within a palace, for the theatre lacks a royal box in which a king may view a performance. Instead, Frederick would sit among his guests in the third row of seating from the stage. The seat rows, which are curved, are reminiscent of an amphitheatre in antiquity. The Theatre is fitted with modern stage equipment which is discreetly placed to preserve the rococo décor.

Opposite to the palace’s westward-opening court of honour are the Communs, designed by Carl von Gontard and Jean Laurent Le Geay. Styled in the same manner as the palace itself, the two buildings housed the royal kitchens, utilities, gardeners’ shops, palace guards and servants. Between the two buildings stretches a curved colonnade, decorated with statuary and obelisks, which acted as a state entrance and as a screen to shield the view of the marshlands beyond. In 1896, Wilhelm II had an underground tunnel constructed to allow passage between the palace and the Communs, avoiding possibly inclement weather. The curved staircases, domes, pilasters and columns do not show the practical purpose of the buildings. Today, the buildings are used by the University of Potsdam and are undergoing restoration although a lack of funding has pushed the date of completion to 2016. The twenty-nine acre parcel has been closed off to the public and is no longer viewable by tourists.

The New Palace, lying at the western end of the Sanssouci royal park, is located on a main axial avenue. At the time of its construction, the palace was located in an expansive baroque park area. Today, the area of the palace park within proximity to the New Palace is laid out simply with pathways, statuary, fountains and greenery. Nearby are the Temple of Friendship and the Antique Temple, which like the New Palace were designed by Carl von Gontard and built shortly after its completion.

Since 1990, the New Palace has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin". The palace is administered by the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg.