Charlottenhof Palace

Charlottenhof Palace or Charlottenhof Manor is a former royal palace located in Sanssouci Park at Potsdam, Germany. It is best known as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William who later became King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Today it is maintained by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg

The park area with its various buildings can be traced back to the 18th century. After it had changed hands several times, King Frederick William III of Prussia bought the land that borders the south of Sanssouci Park and gave it to his son Frederick William and his wife Elisabeth Ludovika for Christmas in 1825

The Crown Prince charged the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel with the remodeling of an already existing farm house and the project was completed on a tight budget from 1826 through 1829. In the end, Schinkel, with the help of his student Ludwig Persius, built a small Neoclassical palace on the foundations of the old farmhouse in the image of a Roman villa.

The palace’s most distinctive room is the Tent Room fashioned after a Roman Caesar’s tent. In the tent room both ceiling and walls are decorated with blue and white striped wallpaper and the window treatments and bed tent and coverings continue that design. This room was traditionally used as a bedroom for ladies-in-waiting.

The blue and white theme is continued throughout the palace’s window shutters, it seems, in admiration to the Bavarian heritage of the then crown princess Elisabeth. Today the grounds are open for tours, and the Romanesque design work never disappoints its visitors.