Prussia’s kings did their living in Berlin and their dreaming in Potsdam. Half an hour south-west by train, the city is a landscape of palaces, parks and lakes, and in winter, without the summer crowds, it makes one of the best day trips from Berlin.
The palaces and parks of Potsdam and Berlin were added together to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1990. You will not see them all in a day. Pick Sanssouci and its park for the morning, the old town for lunch, and one more palace in the afternoon.
Sanssouci
Frederick the Great built his summer palace in 1745–47, on top of a hillside he had terraced for vines. Designed with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, it is small, single-storey and intimate: a place to be, as its name says, without care. Frederick asked to be buried on the terrace beside his dogs, and in 1991, more than two centuries after his death, he finally was. Visitors still leave potatoes on his grave, for the king who encouraged Prussia to grow them.
The park in winter
The park around the palace is free to walk and stretches for more than two kilometres. In winter many of its marble statues are boxed in wood against the frost, which gives the avenues a strange, hushed look. At the far end stands the New Palace, built after the Seven Years’ War on a far grander scale.
The Dutch Quarter
In the centre of Potsdam, the Dutch Quarter is a grid of red-brick gabled houses built in the 1730s and 1740s for craftsmen invited from the Netherlands. Today its streets are full of cafés and small shops, and it is the obvious place for lunch.
Cecilienhof
In the Neuer Garten, by the lake, Cecilienhof looks like an English country house. It was built for the crown prince during the First World War, and in the summer of 1945 Truman, Stalin and Churchill, later Attlee, met here for the Potsdam Conference that decided the future of post-war Germany.
Getting there
Regional trains run from Berlin Hauptbahnhof, Friedrichstraße and Zoo to Potsdam Hauptbahnhof in about 25 minutes; the S-Bahn takes about 40. You need an ABC ticket. Sanssouci Palace is visited by timed ticket, and several smaller buildings close for the winter, so check opening days on the palace foundation’s website. If the weather turns, the Museum Barberini on the Alter Markt has a fine collection of Impressionist paintings.
Stay nearby · 1 of 10 in Berlin
Schlosshotel Berlin
A tranquil hideaway in a historic villa on the edge of the Grunewald.
