The Nauen Gate (Nauener Tor) is one of three surviving city gates of old Potsdam and the most architecturally unusual — a 1755 Gothic Revival fantasy with flanking octagonal towers, battlements, and pointed arches, built at a time when Gothic was considered exotic and picturesque rather than historical. Frederick the Great commissioned it as one of the first Gothic Revival structures in Germany, decades before the style became fashionable across Europe.
The gate stands at the northern edge of the Dutch Quarter, marking the boundary between the 18th-century grid of the inner city and the residential streets beyond. It is a working gate — traffic passes through it — but the towers and battlements are clearly visible and the contrast with the Dutch Quarter's restrained brick buildings behind it is striking. The gate can be combined with a walk through the Dutch Quarter and up towards the Alexandrowka colony to the north.