dutch charm.
on our 3rd walk through potsdam we decided to head into the direction of the alexandrowka settlement & take a look at cecilienhof palace. which was another super long walk, but i will let you in on a secret ( actually no secret anymore by now ): i love to explore cities by foot. i think it is super fun & you get to explore a city more actively than when you let public transportation or your own car do most of the work. i feel that you start to engage with a city more deeply, and there's that sense of feeling like a local, too, especially after a few days of getting to know the streets & the layout. you recognize places & streets from before & your sense of direction & orientation is getting better, which leads to a feeling of immersion. i don't know how to describe it better. i just know that by walking it's going to be decided if i end up loving a place or not. and potsdam was definitely a place i ended up loving - probably because of the overkill of fantastic buildings & history everywhere. i found it so walkable as well with very little level differences ( except inside the park structures ). the fact that for every palace you visit there's an extended park you can take some rest in, is also helping structuring your walks accordingly. the amount of green places was something that stuck out to me as well, because i am a sucker for city jungles. if a city does not have a park or woods or water body closeby, it can happen that i may end up not loving a place as much. water is practically surrounding potsdam in all directions and definitely contributes to the charm of the city. the proximity to berlin is definitely alluring, too, it feels like potsdam is a laid-back extension to the bustle of the german capital - and makes me want to plan another visit so i can have a deeper exploration of former west berlin. i'm keeping it in the back of my mind. the whole area kind of has a pull to it, that makes you want to know more & feel out their essence. ( and i feel that this is also ingrained in my personality - this history i mean. it seems so important to me )
we started our walk in the dutch quarter. it's a really popular district for people who love dining out, and there are also a lot of cute shops & arts and craft stores. the quarter consists of 134 dutch houses & was initially built to populate with dutch settlers in mind. potsdam did not seem to be very attractive to them, though, so later infantrymen were settled into them.
for me, there's almost nothing better than a good brickstone structure complimented with autumnal vine leaves.
la maison du chocolat - a french pastry shop.
the flying dutchman - a restaurant with typical german plain fare on offer.
loved the sailing ship detail & berliner kindl lettering. berliner kindl is a local beer manufacturer that offers plenty of delicious & refreshing specialties, such as the berliner weisse beers that have woodruff, raspberry & other flavours in it ( it's a very light beer, with little alcohol in it ) - one of the very few beers i like to drink ( i generally ain't a huge beer drinker ).
glorious baroque portal.
the louise henrietten monastery is actually not based in potsdam, but in lehnin, 25 km outside of potsdam. the home for fallen girls seemed to have been one of the dependances of the monastery. i couldn't find any info on this, though, and i'm still not sure if it's an inside joke or not. because nowadays it's a hub for queer people and maybe they made it up for funsies? well, probably not. but it's still quite a cheeky juxtaposition.
this little backyard building houses the hofcafe madame recamier. you should check out the interiors, it's a bliss! looking back i'm a little bit sad that we didn't get to check out the many good cafes & restaurants in potsdam. i mean, you only have so much time. the dragon house cafe in sanssouci park was one cafe i'd really recommend to visitors and also one we would later visit on this day, a russian restaurant/cafe inside alexandrowka settlement. we also ate at a tiny russian bar not far away from the dutch quarters ( a la russe ) and at some various italian & chinese places ( contadino, el baron & mandarin ). but in general, due to the walking, we rarely sat down for coffee & cake. and seeing a cafe just like the one above from the inside makes me want to go back immediately & make up for the missed opportunity, ha ;)
the town hall of potsdam. it was built between 1902 & 1907.
you can find a lot of art nouveau buildings in potsdam, too! this 1904 house had some really sweet decorational elements.
after a little walk from the dutch quarter we finally reached our first destination: colony alexandrowka. it's a quarter full of russian wood houses in the midst of garden allotments. you probably wonder why there's a russian settlement in potsdam. here's your answer: it was erected on special wish of frederick william III for the singers of a russian choir in 1826/27. prussia & russia were partners against napoleon in the past and therefore friendly with each other. after tsar alexander died in 1825 the king of prussia decided to commemorate his friendship with him with the erection of the russian colony. it's pretty singular in germany, at least to this extent. the houses are absolutely beautiful and make me think of russian fairytales & slavic folklore. the wooden decor is really swell & gorgeous.
the details of this house made me go 😍
the cut-out window art reminded me so much of GDR art. of course, considering that russia had a huge influence on the GDR and eastern european states.
magnificent wood details! this facade was one of my faves.
in the center of the colony you find this marker & the restaurant alexandrowka. here we got to sit down and drink some delicious russian chocolate & eat a slice of medena torta ( honey torte ). my father ate something more substantial ( i think it involved fish - but i cannot remember anymore ) and my mom had russian tsupfkuchen ( chocolate/cheesecake cake ). i remember everything being super tasty and it kind of sparked a new love in me for russian delicacies.
the house the restaurant resided in. another beauty, right?
those tiny windows with the big flower pots were so charming.
walking keeps you fit. indeed! i absolutely support that! we walked on to pay another building a visit:
the alexander newsky memorial church. a pastel coloured dream in pink. it was also built for the russian choir down in the colony ( at around the same time even ). it's a very early example of byzantine revival architecture, too! we did not go inside ( russian chapels are decked out in gold most of the time and are very tiny - and you ALWAYS have to pay a small fee ), but i'm pretty okay with that.
jesus is watching you.
love stumbling upon red dots of autumn!
not far away from the russian church you will walk upon this gem: the belvedere of pfingstberg hill. but with many things in autumn, this one was closed, too. apparently you can have the best view over potsdam from here, but alas, i couldn't confirm due to this fact. the belvedere resembles an italian renaissance palace, that's because frederick william IV was behind the planning of it. remember, he was also responsible for the roman baths & charlottenhof palace, which both were heavily inspired by his visions of perfect buildings. frederick william had visited italy and was wildly impressed with the architecture there. and on returning back to prussia he brought ideas with him, to build beautiful palazzi all over potsdam. the orangery palace was also one of those buildings he helped bring into life. the pfingstberg belvedere was never really completed, it should've been even bigger. but due to political unrest & frederick william dieing in 1861 the original plans were never executed & william I brought the construction to a definite halt. it was still used as a tea house sort of, even though it is technically a palace. persius, stüler & hesse were the architects behind this project & lenné was responsible for the garden architecture. as you can see, all names are already familar to you, which is something i always think of as fascinating. only a few people were actually responsible for the overall layout & presence of potsdam & shaped it to what it stands for now. quite a career i'd say.
i love the pegasus sculptures at the top of the main gate.
it is quite a majestic structure, really impressive. here's a picture of how it should've looked like in completion.
the entrance hall and the colonnades on each side were my favourite details of the whole building. it's super imposing!
also loved the stone work of the foundation walls.
in front of the belvedere you can walk through these lovely bush tunnels ( i'm sure there's a word for these - but i don't know of it! )
look at this mosaic work? i was hella impressed.
the beautiful ceiling of the colonnades.
the palace from the east side of the hill.
we moved onwards to somehow reach our next destination, cecilienhof castle. on our way there we passed by villa henckel, a late neoclassical building. it was build from 1868 to 1870 by ernst petzholtz for a bank director from berlin.
the bark kitchen inside cecilienhof palace park. together with the old dairy it is the first thing you get to see when you enter the cecilienhof property from the north west.
it looks like a cabin, but it was build to be a kitchen! well, not a real one, actually such extravagant abodes were purely for socializing purposes. tea parties were held inside these, maybe to pretend how it was like to live as a normal citizen or to flee the luxurious court life ^^;
cecilienhof palace was erected from 1913 to 1917 for crown prince william and his wife cecilie, inspired by english tudor castles. the architect was paul schultze-naumburg. despite looking so small and narrow it actually has 176 rooms ( i really wonder why one has to have so many rooms, y'all, it's ridiculous ). various extra rooms were incorporated into it, for example a breakfast room that looks like a ship cabin. surely the crown prince and his wife had quite some crazy ideas of how a home should look like. the interiors of this palace are still very beautiful and exude an air of english living.
another thing cecilienhof palace is prominent for is the fact that the potsdam conference was held here after world war II. stalin, truman & churchill/attlee were meeting up in the big conference room to negotiate what would happen with europe & asia after the big world war. so this place is quite important to the history of europe as well.
the main entrance with the prominent studwork facade & arcade. we didn't get to see the whole palace from the outside as parts of it were under construction as well. but the lakeside of the palace is truly something to behold.
love the carvings of the wooden columns & the geometric design of the studwork.
the palace has many courtyards, but this one was open for public. you cannot see it well, but in the shadows there's a huge red star on the ground, a russian relict of the past, to commemorate the potsdam conference.
we went inside the palace to learn a bit about its history. it was only a brief visit, but interesting nonetheless. here's the ship cabin i mentioned earlier. cecilie used it as her breakfast room.
i don't have a lot to tell about these rooms, except that they were situated in the representative parts of the palace. oh, i just remembered that most of the interior inside the palace is not original anymore as they fell prey to a fire in 1945 ( inside the old dairy, where it was stored because the russians had plans to renovate the palace for their purposes ). everything you see now are unique pieces that were collected to form a coherent picture again.
i think this was jospeh stalin's room. or a part of it, tbh.
the big conference hall was quite impressive. this was the place were the big players determined the faiths of europe.
in that same hall you can find this exceedingly mindblowing staircase.
it led to the second floor ( and into the private rooms of the crown prince ). we didn't get to see this part of the palace, though.
i feel like this could've been churchill's & attlee's room. but i really don't know anymore, haha. maybe it's a truman room. what would you choose?
i think this is more of a churchill room, since it is decked out in this prominently english furniture. ( yeah, i try to imagine those historic figures inside these rooms, don't mind me, lol ).
another nice corner of the palace. the little tour ended soon and we stepped outside of the palace again.
but not without shooting a few more pictures of outside details. like this super dope trunk tree floor. i'm so into that detail.
the many tudor chimneys the palace has are not looking the same. ever. which apparently is very extraordinary. ( and i looooooved it. brickstones! patterns! yay! )
and a last look at one of the gables. more patterns for my geometry loving heart.
in the next part we will explore the new garden ( which is part of cecilienhof palace ) and discover another palace ( yes, it won't ever stop :P ).
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