Potsdam - Glienicke Palace

Today we had an early start as Folke was taking us to Potsdam, which is the capital of the federal province of Brandenburg. It is about 24 kilometres from Berlin with a population of about 300,000 people. The former garrison town has many small palaces, churches and other historic buildings. It’s planning embodied the ideas of the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ through a careful balance of architecture and landscape. Our first stop was to be the House of the Wannsee Conference, which is on the way, but we were too early and so we decided to continue to Potsdam and stop on our way home.

We arrived at Potsdam and stopped at the bridge to get our bearings. Right next to the bridge is Glienicke Palace, which was absolutely beautiful due to the skills of Peter Joseph Lenné who designed the “pleasure ground” at Glienicke Palace for Prince Hardenberg, the Prussian Chancellor of State in 1816. Prince Carl of Prussia acquired the estate in 1824 and employed Lenné to redesign and landscape the entire estate. He worked collaboratively with the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who converted some existing buildings and designed some others. The result is a beautiful estate with amazing buildings and gardens. We were fortunate that when we arrived and wandered through the estate we had the place to ourselves, which made it a much more enjoyable experience as we did not have to battle the hordes or tour buses!Read more