Branitz Palace and its English landscape garden are the defining sight of Cottbus and one of the most unusual designed landscapes in Germany. The palace was the home of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871), an eccentric aristocrat, travel writer, and obsessive landscape gardener who spent four decades reshaping the flat Brandenburg plain into a rolling parkland of artificial hills, lakes, and woodland vistas.
The palace itself — designed by Gottfried Semper, who also built the famous Dresden Opera House — houses a museum devoted to Pückler's life and the garden's creation. The highlight of the grounds is the Seepyramide, a large earthen pyramid rising from the middle of an artificial lake, built as Pückler's mausoleum. Nothing quite like it exists anywhere else. The garden reopened after major restoration following German reunification and is now a UNESCO-recognised landscape.