Getting There
Take the S-Bahn or RE from Berlin.
If you take the RE, disembark at Potsdam, Charlottenhof Bhf.
If you take the S-Bahn, disembark at Potsdam Hauptbahnhof.
Sanssouci Palace
Sanssouci is the former summer palace of Frederick the Great. The palace was built between 1745 and 1747 to fulfill King Frederick’s need for a private residence where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the Berlin court. Sanssouci is a single-story villa containing just ten principal rooms, built on the brow of a terraced hill at the centre of the park. The influence of King Frederick’s personal taste in the design and decoration of the palace was so great that its style is characterised as “Frederician Rococo”, and his feelings for the palace were so strong that he conceived it as “a place that would die with him”.
Orangerie
The Orangery Palace is a palace located in the Sanssouci Park. It was built on behest of the King Friedrich Wilhelm IV from 1851 to 1864.
New Palace
The building of the palace commenced at the end of the Seven Years’ War, to celebrate Prussia’s success. In an architectural form, Frederick the Great sought to demonstrate the power and glories of Prussia. 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.
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.
Eternal Horizon 