Charlottenburg Palace: Prussian Royal Residence and Ceremonial Complex
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, Margraviate of Brandenburg
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page22 sections
History
Charlottenburg Palace is a palace complex in Germany, developed by the Hohenzollern dynasty as a summer residence and ceremonial centre from 1695 onward. Built in successive Baroque, Rococo and Classicist phases, it grew from a small retreat near the village of Lietze into one of the principal residences of the Prussian kings.
Foundation as Lietzenburg
Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, queen consort of Friedrich I, commissioned the residence in 1695 after returning to Caputh Palace because it lay too far from Berlin. The new site stood about seven kilometres from the city, beside a bend of the Spree near Lietze. Johann Arnold Nering designed the original palace, and Martin Grünberg and Andreas Schlüter continued the work after Nering’s death.
Known as Lietzenburg after the neighbouring village, the palace was inaugurated on 11 July 1699. Sophie Charlotte used it as her residence and encouraged a courtly culture centred on opera, music and intellectual life. The palace consequently became associated with her “Muses’ Court.”
In 1701, Friedrich III became King Friedrich I in Prussia, a change that transformed the residence’s role. Johann Friedrich Eosander took charge of its further development and enlarged it substantially between 1702 and 1704. He added side wings and formed a large courtyard. From 1701 until 1888, the palace served as a summer residence of the Prussian kings.
Friedrich I and the renamed palace
Sophie Charlotte died in 1705 at the age of 36. Friedrich I renamed both the palace and the adjoining settlement Charlottenburg in her memory. During his reign, the complex became the principal summer residence and a setting for ambassadorial audiences, royal visits, state occasions and the knighting ceremonies of the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest Prussian order of chivalry. Peter the Great stayed at Charlottenburg in 1712.
Friedrich I’s building programme included the Great Orangery and the Palace Chapel. The chapel was consecrated in 1706 and its interior was completed by 1708. The palace also hosted the 1725 Charlottenburg Treaty with George I of Great Britain, while August the Strong made a formal visit in 1728. Under Friedrich Wilhelm I, expansion largely ceased, although the complex remained in use for official receptions and royal marriages. A freestanding opera house was later demolished, and its materials were given to local citizens for a school.
Friedrich II and the Rococo expansion
Friedrich II became king in 1740 and initially made Charlottenburg his residence. He commissioned Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to create the New Wing, completed in 1747. After Friedrich made Sanssouci his principal summer residence, Charlottenburg continued to host family celebrations. The king also held his Masonic court lodge there and established a dedicated guard unit for the palace.
During the Seven Years’ War, a conflict between Prussia and an opposing coalition including Austria, Russia and Saxony, Russian, Austrian and Saxon forces occupied Berlin in 1760. Charlottenburg Palace was completely looted. Wallpapers, paintings and mirrors were damaged or destroyed, and Friedrich II immediately ordered the interiors to be restored. Some paintings, however, were irretrievably lost.
Late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court life
Friedrich Wilhelm II enlarged the complex to its present monumental extent. He commissioned the palace theatre, the Belvedere and the Small Orangery, while parts of the New Wing were remodelled in early neoclassical, Etruscan-inspired and Chinese-inspired forms. He used Charlottenburg for summer residence and court life.
Friedrich Wilhelm III and Queen Louise occupied the palace during the summer months from 1797. Napoleon Bonaparte stayed in the queen’s apartments after entering Berlin in 1806, and those rooms were later remodelled. When the royal family returned from Königsberg, Karl Friedrich Schinkel redesigned Queen Louise’s bedroom in 1810.
Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Queen Elisabeth later occupied rooms in the Old Palace decorated in late-Classical and Neo-Rococo styles. After Friedrich Wilhelm IV died in 1861, Elisabeth used Charlottenburg as her dower residence. Friedrich III lived there with Queen Victoria during his 99-day reign in 1888. After his death, the palace ceased to serve as a royal residence and was opened to the public.
War, reconstruction and continuing conservation
The former palace theatre became a furniture store in 1902. During and after the First World War, parts of Charlottenburg were used as military hospitals. In 1926, an agreement transferred the palace from the House of Hohenzollern to the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens of Prussia.
During the Second World War, much of the movable inventory was removed to mines and other palaces for protection. Allied air raids in November 1943 and February 1945, followed by fighting between Red Army and SS units occupying the complex, caused extensive destruction. About 60 percent of the complex was damaged. The Mausoleum in the park survived intact, while most rooms retained little more than their exterior walls.
After the war, the ruins were secured against total collapse while their future remained uncertain. Following the demolition of Berlin Palace in East Berlin in 1950, reconstruction was chosen instead of demolition or preservation as a war ruin. Margarete Kühn played a major role in promoting and directing the rebuilding, which aimed to restore the palace as far as possible to its earlier appearance. The dome was reconstructed by 1957.
Each room required an individual restoration decision because destruction, historical importance, earlier alterations, available funds, contractors and surviving documentation varied. Four hundred colour photographs and short films made on 9 November 1943 to record vulnerable wall and ceiling paintings supplied important evidence. Restoration and conservation have continued since the postwar rebuilding. The complex has been administered by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg since 1995.
Charlottenburg Palace and its park form a protected historic and cultural monument. The former theatre has accommodated museum and temporary-exhibition functions, while the Great Orangery is used for concerts and ceremonial events. The Small Orangery contains restaurant and exhibition spaces, the Cavalier Wing houses conservation workshops, and the Kitchen Wing contains service rooms and a museum shop. The palace has also hosted state functions, including the swearing-in of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government in October 2005. From 2004 to early 2006, it temporarily served as the official residence of the German president while Bellevue Palace was renovated.
Remains
Charlottenburg is a large palace complex combining Baroque, Rococo and Classicist architecture. The main building is approximately 505 metres long, covers about 20,600 square metres and carries a dome 48 metres high. Its principal divisions are the Old Palace and the New Wing, supplemented by the Great Orangery, theatre, park buildings and service wings.
Old Palace and court buildings
Original palace and Old Palace
The original Lietzenburg was a relatively small two-storey building with a central section, two projecting bays and a dome. Sophie Charlotte’s rooms occupied the lower level, while guest rooms were placed above. The upper oval hall served ceremonial purposes, and the lower oval hall provided access to the gardens. Corinthian pilasters decorated the facade, with statues running along the cornice.
The Old Palace broadly corresponds to the building enlarged under Eosander. It is arranged symmetrically around a projecting central section and crowned by a massive octagonal tower. A small belfry supports a gilded statue of Fortuna, about four metres high, which functions as a weather vane. Decorative half-columns extend across both exterior storeys.
Court of Honour
The Ehrenhof, or Court of Honour, is a forecourt enclosed on three sides by the palace. Its entrance is flanked by zinc-cast copies of the Borghese Gladiators. The railings carry eight-pointed stars associated with the Order of the Black Eagle.
In front of the palace stands the bronze equestrian monument to the Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm. Friedrich I commissioned it, and Andreas Schlüter and the founder Johann Jacobi made it between 1696 and 1700. Four enslaved figures represent conquered peoples and different temperaments. The monument originally stood on the Long Bridge by Berlin Palace. After the barge carrying it sank, it was recovered in 1949 and moved to Charlottenburg in 1952 after Berlin was divided.
Palace Chapel and historic rooms
Eosander designed the Palace Chapel, which was consecrated on 5 December 1706 for the marriage of Friedrich Wilhelm and Sophie Dorothea. The altar and crown were deliberately positioned opposite one another to express divine sanction for Hohenzollern rule. Bombing heavily damaged the chapel, which was reconstructed with its ceiling frescoes by Anthonie Coxie. The original organ by Arp Schnitger was also lost and later reconstructed.
The Old Palace contains around 50 rooms, including the Porcelain Cabinet, Red Damask Chamber, Golden Cabinet, Lower Oval Hall, Glass Bedroom, Queen’s Audience Chamber, Old Gallery and Upper Oval Hall. The Porcelain Cabinet was opened with the chapel and originally held what may have been the most important collection of Asian porcelain in the empire. Its reconstructed interior displays 2,700 Chinese and Japanese objects, mainly from the Kangxi period, alongside pieces made by the Royal Porcelain Manufactory after those models. Coxie’s allegorical ceiling painting has also been reconstructed.
The Red Damask Chamber, covered with red damask and gold braid, served as a conference room for Friedrich I and his ministers. It has been identified as the intended location of the Amber Room, an elaborate eighteenth-century interior made from amber panels, although the room was not completed there. The panels were later installed in Berlin Palace and subsequently transferred to Russia.
The Golden Cabinet belongs to the second group of apartments associated with Sophie Charlotte. Its name refers to a ceiling painting of Apollo surrounded by allegories of the arts, together with foliate and ribbon ornament. The Lower Oval Hall functioned as a vestibule and garden hall and was decorated with numerous paintings. In the Glass Bedroom, alternating mirrors and green damask create the illusion of a garden, and the room has been reconstructed with period furniture.
The Queen’s Audience Chamber contains portraits of Sophie Charlotte and Friedrich I as well as eighteenth-century furniture. The Old Gallery, also called the Ancestors’ Gallery, displays portraits of Brandenburg and Prussian rulers from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, including Friedrich I. Its woodwork, made by the court sculptor Charles King, survives in original form. The Upper Oval Hall first served representational purposes and later became a salon under Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
New Wing interiors
The two-storey New Wing is regarded as a major achievement of German Rococo. Its royal apartments and ceremonial rooms for Friedrich II include the White Hall, Banqueting Hall, Throne Room and Golden Gallery. Paintings, sculpture, textiles and mirrors decorated the upper-storey interiors. Court painters including Augustin and Matthäus Terwesten and Antoine Pesne produced the ceiling paintings, while Johann August Nahl designed much of the decoration.
The 42-metre Golden Gallery opened in 1746 for dances and is a major example of Frederician Rococo. Antoine Watteau supplied sketches for its gilded reliefs. Bombing completely destroyed the gallery, whose principal restoration lasted more than ten years and was completed in 1972. Further conservation has continued into the twenty-first century.
The White Hall opened on 29 August 1742 as Friedrich II’s dining room. Its present name derives from the fading of its original pink marble lining. Antoine Pesne’s ceiling painting was lost during the war and replaced during reconstruction with abstract coloured forms.
Other interiors preserve distinctive royal furnishings. The East Indian Chintz Room, originally Queen Louise’s dressing room, has glossy printed chintz on its walls and ceiling, decorated with multicoloured bouquets, hanging vases and birds. Some furniture belongs to the original period interior. The Second Hautelisse Room contains original tapestries woven on an upright loom with scenes from Don Quixote. Louis XVI gave the tapestries to the Prussian court, and Louise used the room as a formal dining room.
The New Wing library retains original cedar bookcases associated with Friedrich II’s library. The books now placed in them came from the king’s former winter residence in Potsdam. The wing also contains seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, including Antoine Watteau’s Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera and The Shop Sign of Gersaint, Antoine Pesne’s Barbarina, François Boucher’s The Education of Cupid and Jacques-Louis David’s Bonaparte Crossing the Great St Bernard.
Orangeries and theatre
Great Orangery and Small Orangery
Eosander built the Great Orangery from 1709 to 1712 as an elongated, single-storey Baroque building adjoining the west side of the Old Palace. It covers approximately 1,156 square metres, and the ceilings in its central section are 8.5 metres high. It was intended for royal porcelain and for overwintering rare plants, but later accommodated balls, receptions and royal marriages. Severe wartime damage was followed by rebuilding in 1962.
The Small Orangery belongs to the later expansion of the complex under Friedrich Wilhelm II. Its present functions include exhibition space and a restaurant. The roofline of the palace also carries reconstructed balustrades with 20 allegorical and mythological sculptures. Baroque-inspired replacements began to be installed in 1970. After their removal to the garden beside the Small Orangery in 1996, they returned to the roof in 2007 following restoration of their casting seams and paint layers.
Palace theatre
The palace theatre forms the western end of the complex. Carl Gotthard Langhans built it in early Classicist style between 1788 and 1791 as a three-storey building with approximately 1,200 square metres of interior space. It hosted Hohenzollern celebrations and later became an important venue for German theatre and literature. After wartime destruction, its exterior was restored, and the building housed the Museum of Prehistory and Early History from about 1960 to 2009.
Park and water system
Baroque and landscape garden
The park covers approximately 55 hectares beside the Spree. Siméon Godeau began laying it out in 1697 as a French Baroque garden influenced by André Le Nôtre. Its original design included geometric paths, canals, a garden parterre, western and eastern bosquets, fishing houses, a small harbour, water basins, boules courts, a pheasantry and the Carp Pond.
The water system divided parts of the park into islands accessible by gondola. The royal household and its guests could reach the palace from the Spree by water, using a landing place on the southern side of the Carp Pond.
Between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Johann August Eyserbeck, Georg Steiner and Peter Joseph Lenné transformed the formal garden into an English-style landscape garden. Lawns and loose groups of trees replaced the formal parterre, while straight banks and watercourses were softened. Lenné redesigned the western bosquet from 1819. Friedrich Wilhelm IV later restored the bosquet behind the Baroque Orangery according to childhood memories, although the result did not reproduce the original Baroque form.
The park suffered severe wartime damage and was temporarily used as arable land. Restoration from 1952 partially recovered its earlier appearance. The parterre was replanted in 1958 and given new embroidered-looking ornamental patterns in 1967 and 1968. In 2001, garden-conservation authorities restored the 1950s arrangement because it had itself become a historical document.
Belvedere
Langhans built the Belvedere in 1788 in the north-eastern part of the park beside the Spree. Originally a three-storey tea house and viewing building, it provided Friedrich Wilhelm II with a place of retreat. The building was destroyed during the war and restored externally. It now houses a collection of porcelain from the Berlin Royal Porcelain Manufactory.
Mausoleum
Heinrich Gentz built the Mausoleum in 1810 as a tomb for Queen Louise, following the wishes of the Prussian king and drawing inspiration from the Temple of Paul I at Pavlovsk. Karl Friedrich Schinkel later contributed to its enlargement, and Albert Geyer carried out a further extension in 1890 and 1891.
The crypt contains Louise, Friedrich Wilhelm III, Wilhelm I, Augusta, Auguste von Harrach, Prince Albrecht of Prussia and the heart of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Louise’s tomb monument includes a reclining effigy in Carrara marble designed by Christian Daniel Rauch.
New Pavilion
The New Pavilion stands on the eastern edge of the palace ensemble. Karl Friedrich Schinkel built it between 1824 and 1825 as a Classicist retreat modelled on the Neapolitan Villa Chiatamone. The building measures approximately 20 by 16 metres and has a balcony running around the entire second storey. Friedrich Wilhelm III used it as a place of retreat after Queen Louise’s death.
Bombing badly damaged the pavilion, which was reconstructed between 1957 and 1970. Its interiors represent the early nineteenth-century style of Prussian Hellenism and include furniture and cast-iron garden furniture based on Schinkel’s designs. The collection contains paintings, drawings and sculpture by Christian Daniel Rauch, Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Blechen, as well as Eduard Gaertner’s Panorama of Moscow. Bronze statues of Victories, modelled by Rauch in 1839, stand on granite columns in front of the building.
Former lightweight park structures
The Tahitian Wicker House and the Gothic Fishing House were lightweight structures associated with the park and the Spree. Frequent repairs were required, and the Tahitian Wicker House was demolished in 1865, followed by the Gothic Fishing House in 1884.
Organ and dome sculpture
The Palace Chapel contained an organ by Arp Schnitger from 1706 to 1943 and again from 1970. The original instrument had 26 stops, mechanical action, three stop valves and a tremulant. It was modified in 1888 and restored in 1934. After being removed in 1943, it was destroyed in the 1944 fire at Berlin Palace. Karl Schuke of Berlin reconstructed the organ in 1969 and 1970.
The palace dome carries a gilded figure of Fortuna representing Fortune. Andreas Haidt completed the original in 1711. A copper repoussé reconstruction based on a design by Richard Scheibe replaced it in 1956; the figure is approximately 4.5 metres high and serves as a weather vane.
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