The Orangerie Palace is the grandest building in Sanssouci Park after the Neues Palais — a 300-metre-long Italian Renaissance structure built by Frederick William IV in the 1850s and modelled on the Villa Medici in Rome. It was built as a residence for Tsar Nicholas I and his wife (Frederick William's sister), and the Raphael Hall inside contains 47 copies of Raphael's most famous paintings, commissioned from court painters and displayed in a long gallery.
The Orangerie stands on a high terrace above the park, reached by a grand staircase flanked by water channels. The view from the top terrace across Sanssouci Park and out towards Potsdam is one of the best in the area. In summer you can climb the tower for an even higher vantage point. The basement still functions as an actual orangerie, and the tropical plants moved inside for winter fill the long galleries with unexpected greenery.