Charlottenhof Palace, Potsdam

Charlottenhof Palace, located southwest of Sanssouci Palace in Sanssouci Park, is best known as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia).

The whole area, complete with its buildings, dates back to the 18th century. The land (south of the then Sanssouci Park) had changed hands several times before King Frederick William III bought it and gave it to his son, Frederick William IV, and his wife, Elisabeth Ludovika, as a Christmas gift in 1825.

The Crown Prince commissioned the architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, to remodel the old farmhouse already present on the site into a palatial home. Schinkel, assisted by his student Ludwig Persius, used the house foundations to create a small Neoclassical palace, styled as a Roman villa. The furniture, remarkable for its simple yet cultivated style, for the most part, was designed by Schinkel himself. The project, fairly low-cost, was completed from 1826 to 1829.

Frederick William referred to this summer residence as "Siam" (which at the time was considered "the Land of the Free") and to himself, jokingly, as the "Siam House architect". Artistically inclined, he took an active part in the designing of both the palace and the surrounding gardens. The latter was designed by landscape architect, Peter Joseph Lenné, who completely reworked the originally flat and partly marshy area into an English garden with trees, lawn, and water features, organically incorporating it into the broader Sanssouci complex.

Officially, the palace and the park were named "Charlottenhof" in honor of Maria Charlotte von Gentzkow who had previously owned the property, from 1790 to 1794.

The palace's most distinctive feature – the tent room, used as a guest bedroom – was fashioned after Roman Caesar's tent. Inside it, both the ceiling and the walls were decorated with blue-and-white striped wallpaper; the window treatments and the bed tent with coverings also followed this pattern. The blue-and-white theme is widely spread throughout the palace and can be seen even on window shutters. This was done in tribute to the Bavarian origin of princess Elisabeth.

The interior of all ten rooms is still largely preserved in its original form.

Since 1990, Charlottenhof Palace has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin".