Putbus is the planned residential town of the Putbus princes, laid out from 1810 around a circular paved plaza — the Circus — fringed with neoclassical white-rendered houses. It is one of the few examples in northern Germany of an aristocratic ideal town built more or less from scratch, and the white-painted, columned facades survive almost intact.
The central royal palace was demolished in 1962 by the East German authorities; only the foundations and the park remain. The English-style landscape park is the best surviving piece of the original ensemble, with mature trees, an orangery, and small pavilions. The Rügen narrow-gauge railway begins here at Putbus station — the connection point to the main rail network at Bergen auf Rügen.