Potsdam is the capital of Brandenburg and the most elegant small city near Berlin — about 25 minutes by S-Bahn from the centre of the capital, but a world apart in feel. It was the summer residence of the Prussian kings and German emperors from the early 18th century, and the palaces, parks, and gardens they built here are collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the finest royal landscapes in Europe.
Schloss Sanssouci, Frederick the Great's summer palace (1747), is the centrepiece: a long, low Rococo villa of honeyed stone set at the top of a terraced vineyard, designed by Frederick himself as a retreat from the formality of court. The name means "without worry," and the palace delivers on the promise — intimate rooms, a round library, a Voltaire guest room, and the philosopher-king's grave in front of the building, marked simply with a slab and, by tradition, a potato or two left by visitors. Behind the palace, Sanssouci Park stretches for nearly 300 hectares, with the far grander Neues Palais at the western end (built after the Seven Years' War to demonstrate that Prussia still had money), the Orangerie modelled on Italian Renaissance villas, and the Chinese House, a gilded Rococo tea pavilion.
Beyond the park, Potsdam's old town has been extensively restored since reunification. The Dutch Quarter (Holländisches Viertel), built by Frederick William I in the 1730s for Dutch craftsmen he invited to the city, is a charming grid of red-brick gabled houses now full of cafés, galleries, and boutiques. The Alexandrowka colony of Russian-style log houses is even more unexpected. The Cecilienhof, a mock-Tudor English country house in the Neuer Garten, was the venue for the 1945 Potsdam Conference — the round table where Truman, Stalin, and Churchill sat is still in place. The Old Market Square anchors the city centre, overlooked by the Museum Barberini, St. Nicholas Church, and the reconstructed City Palace.
Potsdam is an easy day trip from Berlin, but deserves an overnight to see Sanssouci at opening time and to walk the parks and lake shores in the evening light. For those with more time, Babelsberg Park and the Glienicke Bridge — the Cold War's "Bridge of Spies" — are worth the extra effort, as is the Filmmuseum Potsdam in the former royal stables and the Einsteinturm on the Telegrafenberg.