Potsdam, more than Berlin, was the home of the Hohenzollern princes who created Prussia, the most ambitious and vital of German states.

The Brandenburg state capital is a beautiful city that is fortunate in its location, amid vast green and wooded expanses where the river Havel forms a chain of lakes. But it is not only the man-made landscapes of Potsdam’s parks and palaces that tell the city’s story and appeal to travellers.

The city’s modern development started with a royal garrison and many town houses were used to billet soldiers.

In the 18th century Friedrich Wilhelm I, Prussia’s ‘soldier king’, had the town walled, while stables, parade ground, an army church, military orphanage and a canal were constructed. Some of this can be seen or traced today.

Stadtschloss restores past glory

Potsdam’s first grand residence was built by the Brandenburg elector Friedrich Wilhelm, known as the Great Elector. In the 1660s he built a pleasure palace, gardens and a lake on the site of a fortification that had secured a strategic river crossing since the 10th century. The palace became the chief Potsdam residence of Prussian rulers and was known as the Stadtschloss.

In the late 1740s, about the time he conceived the plan for Schloss Sanssouci, Frederick the Great directed Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to redesign the Stadtschloß in his favourite Rococo style.

The Stadtschloss has been largely rebuilt after terrible damage by a 1945 air raid led the East German regime to destroy it. A rebuilding project completed in 2013 restored the Rococo exterior and the ornate Fortunaportal gate, though to larger dimensions.

But the exterior is deceptive: inside it is refitted with modern conveniences, offices and chambers as the new seat of the Brandenburg state assembly. Knobelsdorff’s staircase, however, has been painstakingly reconstructed.

The recreation restores the main Potsdam square Alter Markt, with the Rathaus and impressive Nikolaikirche, to its historical appearance.

Marstall

The other state building from the Baroque period is the Marstall. The stables next to the Stadtschloss started life as an as an orangerie, designed by Johann Arnold Nering and completed in 1685.

Friedrich Wilhelm I, however, had the building converted for use as stables and these remained in use for more than two centuries. Frederick the Great had Knobelsdorff redesign it in the 1740s and an equestrian sculpture was added to the portal.

The building was again converted as a museum in 1922 and today is Potsdam’s museum of film, but retains the appearance it had after Knobelsdorff’s work.

History on Potsdam’s streets

Potsdam has mostly retained modest proportions, despite its growth and the intrusion of several Cold War multi-storey buildings. Its own Brandenburger Tor is less weighty than Berlin’s but provides a focal point for the square Luisenplatz and an archway to the main Brandenburger Straße and its harmonious two-storey period buildings. The 18th century Tuscan-style Jägertor and Neogothic Nauener Tor are other surviving historical gateways.

Along Charlottenstraße is a section of restored Baroque housing and the more Classical-looking old guardhouse Alte Wache.

Even more Classical, but much bigger, is the Nikolaikirche at Alter Markt, one of several Potsdam buildings showing the hand of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, as well as the influence of St Paul’s in London. Opposite is the three-storey Altes Rathaus, designed by Jan Bouman, which shows Palladian influence. Its central dome and facade columns convey grandeur.

Also impressive is the restored military orphanage, the Großes Militärwaisenhaus. Nearby on Breite Straße is the Hiller-Brandtsche Häuser, which also has a London connection in that it was modelled on an unrealised Inigo Jones plan for the palace of Whitehall.

Potsdam as a city of tolerance

Few people would associate the Prussian regime with tolerance. But the Calvinist Hohenzollern rulers, who practised a different Protestant faith than their mostly Lutheran subjects, were welcoming to minorities from other countries, especially when they could see benefits for their Brandenburg electorate, later the Prussian kingdom.

The Hohenzollerns had close links with the Netherlands for centuries and Jews had always been welcome in Berlin. But Protestant Bohemian and French Huguenot immigrants had a big influence on Potsdam and Russians later had a village dedicated to them and laid out in garden style by the master landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné.

Potsdam under the Hohenzollerns became associated with immigration and religious tolerance. In 1685 Friedrich Wilhelm brought down the Edict of Potsdam, granting persecuted French Protestants sanctuary and freedom of conscience in his domains.

Later, Frederick himself invited Bohemian Protestant silk weavers to settle in a part of the Babelsberg quarter of Neuendorf that the immigrants called Nowawes. About 120 cottages in the area of Alt Nowawes and Weberplatz retain characteristic, mostly single-storey period housing and a small museum of the weavers’ lives and work occupies the cottage at Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 23.

Friedrich Wilhelm I already had Russian soldiers in a special Potsdam regiment that required men at least 188cm tall. These had been sent as a gift by the tsar Peter the Great. Almost a century later, in 1812, Russian soldiers who had been prisoners of war formed a regiment joined to the Prussian forces against Napoleon. They formed a choir that earned the king’s enthusiasm.

In the 1820s Friedrich Wilhelm III invited the regimental survivors to stay and Lenné laid out the cross-shaped village known as Siedlung Alexandrowka for them to live. Log houses were built in traditional style and today remain. One is a museum. An Orthodox church, the Alexander-Newski-Gedächtniskirche, was built on the hill above and is still in use.

Potsdam became home to Vietnamese immigrants in the 1980s and now houses Syrian and Ukrainian refugees.

Architecture from foreign lands

Immigrants to Potsdam also shaped its architecture. Friedrich Wilhelm I, his grandson and Prussia’s first king, settled Dutch craftsmen in a town quarter still identified as Holländisches Viertel.

Today it is marked by about 150 distinctive 18th century red-brick houses of varying size, built in a project led by the Dutchman Bouman. The precinct has been restored and Bouman’s own house in Mittelstraße is now a museum.

French and Italian influences also showed in Potsdam’s architecture, thanks to the tastes of various rulers. But Moorish architecture also shaped the style of one building, the Dampfmaschinenhaus. The steam pump inside, designed for the king Friedrich Wilhelm IV by August Borsig in the 1840s, finally got the grand fountain before Schloss Sanssouci working after almost a century of failure.

Ludwig Persius designed the building with a tower that reached almost 40m, which came to be known as the Moschee (mosque). Borsig’s plant is still maintained for visitors, although it no longer drives the fountain.

Potsdam becomes the cradle of German film

Openness and tolerance was embedded in Potsdam’s culture and foreigners could find a home in the city. It is no surprise that in Babelsberg the world’s oldest large-scale film studio opened before World War I. There, artists from throughout Europe could realise their dreams.

Between the world wars Babelsberg became the centre of the German motion picture industry. After developing its art during the silent era, UFA studios made many of the first German talkies and launched many international film careers, including those of Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. Even Alfred Hitchcock learned his craft there.

Later, however, German film became a tool of the Nazis, causing many filmmakers and actors to flee to the US.

Visiting Potsdam

Potsdam’s parks and palaces are a UNESCO world-heritage site. The city is easy to reach from Berlin using frequent local or regional trains. The trip takes just over half an hour and several stations can be reached using the S-Bahn network.

The central city can be covered in a day trip from Berlin, but touring the parks and palaces such as Neues Palais and Schloss Cecilienhof demands two or three days.

To get details of all the sights and essential travel tips, download the Raven Travel Guides Europe Potsdam PDF travel guide or Berlin travel guide. To read about the Cold War intrigue involved at the border between Potsdam and West Berlin, read the blog on Glienicker Brücke.