When was sanssouci castle built

This site may not function properly in your current browser. Update Now. Sanssouci Palace. No other palace is so closely linked with the personality of Frederick the Great as Sanssouci Palace.

Sanssouci Park is an ensemble of palaces and garden complexes, which were built under Frederick the Great during the 18th century and were expanded under Frederick William IV in the 19th century. Sanssouci Palace, the summer residence of Frederick the Great, is its main focus.

January - March: Monday: closed Tuesday - Sunday: - April - October: Monday: closed Tuesday - Sunday: - November - December: Monday: closed Tuesday - Sunday: - On public holidays, weekend opening hours apply unless otherwise stated.

Last admission: 30 minutes before closing Visits to Sanssouci Palace are bound to fixed admission times. On 17 August , on the anniversary of his death, his coffin was finally placed in the crypt in Sanssouci Palace as he had instructed years ago.

Sanssouci Palace hosted many prominent philosophers and artists of the period. After the construction of the palace in , Frederick moved in to his new palace and only went to Berlin for formal occasions.

Frederick ordered his new palace to be built in a rococo style, with a simple looking exterior and an astonishing interior. During the construction, Frederick often added new features although some of them were out of fashion at the time. The dome is white with gilded ornament, and the floor is of Italian marble intarsia inlaid in compartments radiating from a central trelliswork oval. The adjoining room served as both an audience room and the Dining Room. However, here, as in the majority of the rooms, the carved putti, flowers and books on the overdoor reliefs were the work of Glume, and the ceiling paintings emphasise the rococo spirit of the palace.

This exuberant form of ornamentation of rococo, Rocaille, was used in abundance on the walls and ceiling in the music room. Much of the work was by the sculptor and decorator Johann Michael Hoppenhaupt the elder.

Here, the clean and plain lines of classicism now rule. The circular library deviated from the spatial structure of French palace architecture. The room is almost hidden, accessed through a narrow passageway from the bedroom, underlining its private character. Cedarwood was used to panel the walls and for the alcoved bookcases. The harmonious shades of brown augmented with rich gold-coloured Rocaille ornaments were intended to create a peaceful mood. The bookcases contained approximately 2, volumes of Greek and Roman writings and historiographies and also a collection of French literature of the 17th and 18th centuries with a heavy emphasis on the works of Voltaire.

The books were bound in brown or red goat leather and richly gilded. The north facing gallery overlooked the forecourt. Here, again, Frederick deviated from French room design, which would have placed service rooms in this location.

Recessed into the inner wall of this long room were niches containing marble sculptures of Greco-Roman deities. Five windows alternating with pier glasses on the outer wall reflect the paintings by Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Antoine Watteau hung between the niches opposite.

To the west were the guest rooms in which were lodged those friends of the King considered intimate enough to be invited to this most private of his palaces. The Rothenburg room is named after the Count of Rothenburg, who inhabited his circular room until his death in This room balances the palace architecturally with the library.

The Voltaire Room was frequently occupied by the philosopher during his stay in Potsdam between and On a yellow lacquered wall panel were superimposed, colourful, richly adorned wood carvings. Apes, parrots, cranes, storks, fruits, flowers, garlands gave the room a cheerful and natural character.

Johann Christian Hoppenhaupt the younger designed the room between and from sketches made by Frederick. Rooms The five guestrooms adjoining the marble hall to the west have the windows to the garden side and the first four rooms an alcove on the opposite wall. The walls of the first guest room are paneled in white-painted wood, in whose narrow fields Friedrich Wilhelm Hoeder painted delicate pink ornaments and figural representations in the Chinoise style.

The room underwent a change in when a blue satin drape semi-silk atlas was stretched over the paneling. Presumably, the use of excessively wet wood led to the formation of cracks, which should be covered in this way. The walls of the second and third guest rooms were given a textile wall covering already during the installation. In addition to the superbra paintings with still lifes by Augustin Dubuisson , a son of Jean Baptiste Gayot Dubuisson, the 18th-century painters hang on the blue and white striped fabric of the second room and on the red and white striped wall of the third room landscapes and vistas of Giovanni Paolo Panini, Luca Carlevaris, Michele Marie ski and others.

It is not known who, over the decades, has been privileged to live in Sanssouci. It is not certain that Voltaire lived in the summer palace from to during his stay in Potsdam, as he occupied rooms in the Potsdam City Palace; In any case, he was in the three years more frequent guest of the king.

The original painting of Hoeder, with gray-purple ornaments, is now visible only in the niche. Hoppenhaupt created a yellow-lacquered oak paneling with colorful, sculpted wood carvings depicting flowers, fruits, shrubs and animals.

The colorful flower decoration made of stucco and iron sheet continues on the ceiling. A bust of Voltaire Wilhelm II. After the created model of the porcelain model Friedrich Elias Meyer d. Copy in and put in the room before It received its today still valid designation after a close confidant of the king, the count Friedrich Rudolf of Rothenburg, who inhabited the space regularly until its death The delicately painted wood paneling painted Hoeder with Chinese motifs, which resemble the design in the first guest room.

The pictures of an unknown artist in the niche show grotesques that go back to ornamental engraving after Antoine Watteau. Side wing In Friderizian times the rooms for servants were in the single-storey wing on the east side and the castle kitchen and stable boxes for the horses on the west side.

Through the new building under Frederick William IV, the kitchen in the eastern wing and the room for servants in the raised upstairs. The west wing took up the living quarters for court ladies.

In the newly built kitchen wing, the wine storage, a room for ice-making, larger storage rooms, the lamp chamber, working quarters for cellar staff and the pastry shop were accommodated. The workrooms for the direct supply of the castle residents were on the ground floor. In addition to the square meter kitchen, which occupies the entire width of the side wing, there was a coffee kitchen for the preparation of breakfast and cold food, a Kaffetier parlor, a baking chamber, the writing room of the master craftsman Kaffetier , a small pantry and two rooms for cleaning the silverware.

The kitchen master, the steward and other servants lived in the raised first floor. Since the kitchen was only used from to and after that no structural changes took place, the fixed inventory still exists today. In its time, the state-of-the-art stove is equipped with hotplates of various sizes, with roasting and baking compartments, a water bubble and a heating cupboard.

The west wing, also queenscalled, was the accommodation of court ladies and guests. Each apartment has two rooms. The preferred rooms on the ground floor, with their direct access to the garden, made Friedrich Wilhelm IV more elaborate with wood-paneled walls than the usually wallpapered rooms upstairs. The fireplaces are almost all from the Friderician period and were probably in the around redesigned west apartment of Frederick II in thePotsdam City Palace had been installed.

In later years, but also added contemporary furniture. For Frederick William IV in connection with Sanssouci, however, not only a fad, but also a return to the artistic values of Frederick II and to find in this consequence only in Sanssouci.

In the numerous other buildings erected during his reign in Potsdam, he preferred style forms of antiquity, the Renaissance and Classicism. On 10 August , Frederick ordered the bare hillside to be transformed into terraced vineyards.