Charlottenhof Palace, Potsdam, Germany

Charlottenhof Palace is located southwest of Sanssouci Palace. It is most famous as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia). 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 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 neo-classical palace on the foundations of the old farm house in the image of the old Roman villas.

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.

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.

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Wieskirche

The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.

The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.

The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.

Alina Gumirova (2 years ago)
Was there for a Potsdam castle night, it was incredible!

Guido Chirinos Cazorla (2 years ago)
Yesteday, my partner and I visited Charlottenhof Palace. It was kind of disappointing, because it was far, the furniture is not original, and there are no painted ceilings or paintings but prints.

Boyan Aleksandrov (3 years ago)
Former summer residence in the image of a Roman villa. The palace's most distinctive room is the tent room fashioned after a Roman Caesar's tent.

mohamed amine (3 years ago)
So amazing place paradise

Alexandr Orlov (6 years ago)
This place is interesting to watch from the outside. Inside is just a small relatively interesting museum. From the outside you can take a walk and enjoy its architecture.

Charlottenhof Palace

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