Enjoy a private sightseeing tour in Potsdam – let your driver-guide take you across the famous spy bridge and then plunge into the private world of Frederick the Great and his Sanssouci Palace! Pay a visit to Cecilienhof Palace, famous for the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
Potsdam – the jewel at the gates of Berlin – jokingly called “Prussia’s Disneyland“, was indeed conceived as “Prussia’s Arcadia”. For centuries the kings and queens of the Hohenzollern Dynasty – Prussia’s royal family – had made Potsdam a playground for their architectural fantasies, fulfilling personal ambitions and following their idiosyncratic predilections vying as much with each other as with their predecessors. The result of over 200 years of royal summer residence: 12 palaces, each unique in its own way!
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Choose a comfortable limousine, a luxurious minivan or a classy coach and let your personal guide take you from Berlin to Potsdam. This drive is in itself an exhilarating experience: whether you take the “neighborhood-route” through the plush suburbs of Grunewald or Dahlem, or the “nature-route” along the Havel River, you will be amazed at the unexpected scenery, all of it within the city limits!
We leave Berlin by crossing Glienicker bridge, better known as the “Spy Bridge“, a venue for the exchange of spies between the United States and the Soviet Union during the “Cold War“. At the other end you enter Potsdam, the city featuring a host of highlights such as:
Sanssouci Palace, the intimate rococo style residence of Frederick the Great, a Prussian king still much admired to this very day! Sometimes called the “Vineyard Palace” for its location and decoration, Sanssouci is also the name for some 700 acres of palatial gardens with charming surprises like the famous Chinese Teahouse, Neptune’s grotto or the Roman Baths, as well as overwhelming structures like the New Palace and the Orangery.
New Palace, located on the western fringe of the Park of Sanssouci is a gigantic edifice, erected in a mere 7 years and described by its creator Frederick II as his “ostentation”. Enduring the vicissitudes of history, it rose to glory during the reign Germany’s last emperor Wilhelm II, who chose it as his favourite residence.
Cecilienhof, the site of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, is situated on the water front in the New Garden. This former residence of the last German Crown prince and named for his beautiful wife Cecilie is the place where Truman, Stalin and Churchill debated the fate of defeated Germany and finalized the decision to slice it up into a number of pieces!
If you have already done “the big three”, or if you would like to spend time on an extended visit, there is an abundance of further options such as: the Marble Palace, also in the New Garden, the Orangery, Charlottenhof, the Picture Gallery, all three of which to be found in the Park of Sanssouci, the Alexandrowka, a Russian style village, or the famous Babelsberg film studios, the cradle of the German film industry and once a German version of Hollywood.
You should certainly not leave before spending some time in the dainty little town of Potsdam itself. Enjoy the gorgeously renovated baroque city center and the charming Dutch quarter with its beautiful early 18th century red brick houses, built to mimic contemporary Dutch architecture, and today home to dozens of little fancy shops, cafés and restaurants. The perfect place for a little culinary delight before returning to Berlin. Choose either another scenic route or the Autobahn, taking you back to the city centre in no time flat.
