Glienicke Palace is the result of a rich royal kid travelling to Italy and falling in love with the country. Prince Carl of Prussia (1801–83) was only 21 when he returned to Berlin giddy with dreams of building his own Italian villa, so he hired starchitect du jour Karl Friedrich Schinkel to turn an existing garden estate into an elegant, antique-looking compound. You can visit the richly decorated interior with marble fireplaces, sparkling chandeliers, gold-framed paintings and fine furniture.
The turquoise bedroom of the princess and the midnight-blue library are especially memorable. Schinkel not only expanded the mansion, but added a smaller guesthouse (the ‘Casino’) and two charming pavilions, the Kleine Neugierde (‘Small Curiosity’) and Grosse Neugierde (‘Great Curiosity’). The latter sits in an especially scenic spot overlooking the Havel River, Schloss Babelsberg and the outskirts of Potsdam. The palace is about 6km west of S-Bahn station Wannsee and served several times hourly by bus 316.
