New Palace, Potsdam, Germany

The New Palace (Neues Palais) is the largest and most imposing of the royal buildings in Potsdam’s Sanssouci park, closing its long central avenue with a vast Baroque façade more than 200 metres wide and crowned by a green copper dome. Frederick the Great had it built between 1763 and 1769, immediately after the exhausting Seven Years’ War, precisely to show that Prussia’s power and wealth were undiminished — the king himself half-mockingly called it his “fanfaronade,” or piece of showing off. With over 200 rooms behind a front adorned by some 400 sandstone statues, it is generally regarded as the last great Prussian Baroque palace, and it forms part of the Sanssouci ensemble inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990.

What to See

For all its size, the New Palace was meant mainly for guests and court festivities rather than for the king himself, and its state rooms are lavish to match. The most extraordinary is the Grotto Hall (Grottensaal) on the ground floor, whose walls and columns are encrusted with tens of thousands of shells, minerals, fossils and semi-precious stones, glittering like the inside of a jewelled cave. Above it stretches the vast Marble Hall (Marmorsaal), a ballroom some 70 metres long rising through two storeys, while the Upper Gallery hangs with Flemish and Italian paintings and the intimate Rococo Court Theatre still stages performances today. Behind the palace, across the courtyard, stand the Communs — two grand domed service buildings linked by a sweeping colonnade that once held the kitchens and staff quarters and now belong to the University of Potsdam. In its later years the palace became a favourite home of the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

How to Get There and Practical Information

The New Palace stands at the far western end of Park Sanssouci in Potsdam, about 25 kilometres south-west of central Berlin. From Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, buses run to the “Neues Palais” stop right by the building, and the palace also has its own regional station, Potsdam Park Sanssouci, a few minutes’ walk away; alternatively it is a pleasant walk of around half an hour across the park from Sanssouci Palace. The surrounding park is free to enter, while the palace interior is ticketed, generally with timed entry, and is usually closed on Tuesdays. Because it lies at the opposite end of the park from Sanssouci Palace, it is well worth combining the two on a single visit, allowing a good half-day to see both and to walk the gardens in between.