Schloß Sanssouci, the superb summer palace on the terrace above the Weinberg, is today Potsdam's chief visitor attraction. At its height, it was a magnet for the intellectual elite of Europe.

But it's also one of Germany's smallest palaces, with only 10 main chambers. This was due to Frederick the Great's preference for small gatherings of friends, artists and intellectuals.

In Potsdam, Frederick saw possibilities for a royal residence in more intimate surroundings than he could enjoy in Berlin. This choice changed the character of Potsdam, which under his predecessors had been a garrison town.

Schloß Sanssouci is valuable for its appeal and for the way it reveals the opposing extremes of the king's character. It’s the best window we have into Frederick’s soul.

Frederick, a man of taste and strong artistic opinions, made concept drawings for a small, single-storey Rococo flourish. His inspiration shows in the palace's design, and his stubbornness shows in the dispute with his architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, which led to a parting of ways.

Frederick was a soldier, philosopher and artist-king. His career was marked by bold gambles in the quest for total victory. Enlightened he may have been, but he was implacable and his word was absolute.

Today, Frederick's boutique vision earns the gratitude of visitors. Knobelsdorff, however, also knew what he was doing. He protested the impracticality of Frederick's design and the lack of a raised platform to counter dampness. On the second point, the architect was correct but was sacked and retired to a grand Potsdam town house.

As further proof of Frederick's victory in this battle of ideas, his sketch plan survives.  

Schloß Sanssouci as pleasure palace

Schloß Sanssouci is a pleasure palace, opulent but delicate and refined. It reflects one side of Frederick's contradictions, far from the bloody battlefields where he made his reputation.

In understanding Sanssouci, it's essential to recognise that Frederick the Great, the Prussian king, was, in his way, also a French king. He spoke French, read French and enjoyed French paintings and music. He gave the new palace a French name, meaning 'without care', consistent with his aims and desires.

The ideal for the palace was to reach and express harmony between man and the natural world. Frederick achieved this through artifice and natural motifs – usually representing wine – in interior decoration. The French influence shows in the delicate stucco work and ornate ceilings. Sophistication is the theme of a palace designed to be personal and welcoming rather than imposing. The palace became the best example of the style that became known as Frederician Rococo.

For Frederick, gardens were living art, a space for reflection and philosophical contemplation. The king and his guests could step onto the terraces to enjoy splendid garden views. Through any of the many doors, the world was at his feet.

Stairs ascended the hill of the Weinberg, which was planted extensively with vines and fruit trees. In most grand palaces of the period, staircases were magnificent, large-scale designs, highly decorated to make a powerful impression on visitors. At Sanssouci, the grand stairs were through Nature itself.

The artist in Frederick also demanded a music room – where he enjoyed playing his flute to his guests – and a private picture gallery. The Frenchman Antoine Watteau was his favourite painter and Frenchman Antoine Pesne worked in Frederick's court.

Before long, the palace became Frederick's chief residence, his usual home when not visiting Berlin and on military campaigns. 

Palace of men and ideas

Sanssouci became a private world of ideas because that, too, was Frederick's pleasure.
The French philosopher Voltaire was among Sanssouci's famous guests and is often presumed to have lived at the palace for two summers on a stipend from Frederick as his chamberlain. Voltaire engaged in spirited debates with the king over topics ranging from governance to literature.

Despite their fiery arguments, which embody the Enlightenment spirit that Frederick valued, the two had mutual respect. However, they clashed often over issues beyond the world of ideas. Other guests included Casanova.

One striking fact at Sanssouci was the absence of the queen, Elisabeth Christine, the childless consort Frederick seldom acknowledged. The palace housed an exclusively male circle, referred to as the 'round table'. Voltaire, in posthumously published memoirs, was among the first to suggest openly that the king was gay, suggestively relating post-coffee interludes with soldiers or pages.

Rumours spread in European courts and allusions to Frederick's preference for men were apparent in some works of the period.

Some writers have assumed Frederick's homosexuality based on the homoeroticism of his preferred works of art at Sanssouci. Many historians reached the same conclusion based on written accounts.

A century after the palace was built, the painter Adolph von Menzel imagined the round table with Frederick at the centre and Voltaire, dressed in purple and leaning forward in earnest conversation with Casanova opposite. 

The only other palace inhabitants were the king's beloved greyhounds – perhaps his most faithful companions. 

Palace designed for privacy

Schloß Sanssouci's main wing is less than 100m long. The vestibule led to an oval-plan marble hall, modelled on Rome's Pantheon (on a much smaller scale) but presented with gilded ceiling ornament and stucco surrounding a central oculus to admit light. The decorative theme, stories of Bacchus, continues outside.

To the east side were a small audience room decorated in lavender damask and the mirrored concert room, followed by the modestly sized royal apartment and study. It was here that Frederick died, seated, in 1786.

Sadly, the bedroom's interior was redesigned along Classicist lines by Frederick's nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II and today no longer represents the original decor. But the rest of the palace is much as it was in Frederick's day, despite some traffic in paintings.

Attached at one end of the palace was a round library of more than 2,000 volumes of French and Classical works, panelled in cedar. No one but Frederick was permitted to enter.

On the west side were guest rooms, including the so-called Rothenburgzimmer, named for its regular occupant Friedrich Rudolf von Rothenburg, a member of Frederick's general staff and round-table member. The Voltairezimmer, decorated in a lemon-coloured lacquer with richly detailed carvings, had the same elongated form as the gallery. It seems unlikely the philosopher stayed there, however.

The palace surroundings

One of Knobelsdorff's strongest protests had been the lack of service space in Frederick's plan. His suggestion of a half-basement level beneath the palace to accommodate a kitchen, bakery, cellar and rooms for domestic staff was brushed aside. These had to be set back in separate wings either side of the main building and screened off by trees, and almost a century later extensions were demanded.

Schloß Sanssouci was completed in 1747 – after less than three years – under the management of the Dutch architect and builder Jan Bouman, creator of Potsdam's Dutch precinct and the building that later became Schloß Charlottenhof. Bouman's competence is unquestionable, but we can be in little doubt about who really was in charge.

Two aspects of Frederick's palace plan did not work. One was the fountain at the foot of the Weinberg, Große Fontäne, which is such an attraction today. The ambitious hydraulics did not operate properly, and it was Bouman's turn to feel the king's displeasure. He retreated to Berlin, but in his defence, the fountain did not work until a redesign a century later.

Frederick's nod to Classical principles was a curved colonnade on the north entrance to the palace. His father had already had a post mill built on the ridge, enhancing the rural feel, and today's Historische Mühle was not built in its place until after Frederick's death.

Schloß Sanssouci was, of course, too small to contain all the functions and wishes of a king. The Rococo Neue Kammern, planned by Knobelsdorff as an orangerie and completed by Bouman, had to be built west of the Weinberg, eventually also accommodating a theatre, banquet hall and concert hall.

Later on, Frederick's desire for more paintings forced the building of a separate pavilion, the Bildergalerie, on the east side of the Weinberg. Schloß Sanssouci's boutique scale provided insufficient hanging space to contain Frederick's appetite for art.

Even more intimate than Schloß Sanssouci was the teahouse Chinesisches Haus, also Rococo and designed by Johann Gottfried Büring. It stands several hundred metres away in Park Sanssouci, a sprawling expanse of English-style parkland studded with small planned gardens, statues and pavilions that was successively extended under Frederick's successors. One estimate measures its combined pathways at 70km. 

Two palaces in contrast

When Friedrich Wilhelm IV occupied Schloß Sanssouci in the 19th century, Ludwig Persius conducted the first major renovation. Periodic renovations have been made since.

Frederick did build a big Potsdam palace, a project which speaks as powerfully about his divided character as the ethos of Schloß Sanssouci. At the end of the Seven Years War, which strained the resources of Prussia and its enemies Austria and Saxony, Frederick commissioned the grand Baroque Neues Palais at the western end of Park Sanssouci.

Neues Palais aimed to make a grand impression on international guests and express Prussian defiance and magnificence. In short, it was Frederick's political statement. Its message was that Prussia, despite its many battles and huge manpower losses, could not be exhausted. Completed in 1769, it still contrasts with Schloß Sanssouci, built more than 20 years before. Like Sanssouci, it was purpose built, but expressed Frederick's other side, that of the absolutist soldier.

Mystery remains in the French title 'Sans, souci' on the exterior of the oval marble hall, facing the Weinberg. Many have speculated about the placement of the comma and its real meaning. Frederick's inner contradictions and tensions are apparent, but he is still an enigma.

The second failed aspect of Schloß Sanssouci's plan took years to realise. Knobelsdorff had been right about the low profile of the palace and its lack of a basement. Dampness became a problem and could not have helped the arthritis that plagued Frederick's final years.

Sanssouci remained Frederick's favourite spot and was his choice of last resting place. But it took more than two centuries for the king's remains to find their way to the simple slab graves he had ordered placed on the terrace. In 1991 Frederick's coffin was removed from Potsdam's Garnisonkirche and reinterred next to his beloved greyhounds, as he had always wished.

Most who pay their respects at his grave today – with roses or the potatoes the king had championed for his kingdom – bow to the royal prerogative. The view from the Sanssouci terrace is like few others.

Visiting Schloß Sanssouci

Frederick the Great built Schloß Sanssouci to welcome visitors. Today his pleasure palace, despite its size, attracts hundreds of thousands each year. The intimacy of the 18th century can now only be imagined. But the king's vision remains splendid and is the centrepiece of a UNESCO world-heritage site of many Potsdam palaces and gardens.

The palace can be reached by bus from Potsdam's central rail station, connected by the S-Bahn train with Berlin. Timed and booked tickets are needed for each palace visitor.

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