Bornstedt Crown Estate

Bornstedt is a borough of Potsdam, Germany. Located north of Sanssouci Park and the Orangery Palace, it is known for the Bornstedt Crown Estate, former residence of Princess Royal Victoria, and the Bornstedt Cemetery with numerous tombs of famous personages.

The Ruinenberg is a hill in the Bornstedt borough of Potsdam, located north of Sanssouci Park. In 1748, the Prussian king Frederick the Great had a water tank with a capacity of around 7,600 cubic metres (270,000 cu ft) built on top to supply the Sanssouci water features, and had it decorated with artificial ruins. From 1841 a surrounding landscape garden was laid out at the behest of King Frederick William IV of Prussia, according to plans designed by Peter Joseph Lenné.

The Orangery Palace (German: Orangerieschloss) is a palace located in the Sanssouci Park of Potsdam, Germany. It is also known as the New Orangery on the Klausberg, or just the Orangery. It was built on behest of the "Romantic on the Throne", King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Frederick William IV of Prussia) from 1851 to 1864.

The Historic Mill of Sanssouci is a mill in Potsdam, Germany. Thanks to the legend of The Miller of Sanssouci (German: Der Müller von Sanssouci), the Mill (Historische Mühle) became famous, particularly due to its association with Frederick the Great and his summer palace of Sanssouci.

The New Chambers (German: Neue Kammern) is part of the ensemble of Sanssouci palace in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, Germany. They were constructed for King Frederick the Great of Prussia from 1771 to 1775.

Sanssouci (German pronunciation: [ˈsãːsusi]) is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it, too, is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the surrounding park. The palace was designed and built by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to meet Frederick's need for a private residence where he could escape the pomp and ceremony of the royal court. The palace's name is a French phrase (sans souci) that translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", emphasising that the palace was meant as a place of relaxation, rather than a seat of power. Sanssouci is little more than a large, single-story villa—more like the Château de Marly than Versailles. Containing just ten principal rooms, it was built on the brow of a terraced hill at the centre of the park. The influence of King Frederick's personal taste in the design and decoration of the palace was so great that its style is characterised as "Frederician Rococo", and his feelings for the palace were so strong that he conceived it as "a place that would die with him". Because of a disagreement about the site of the palace in the park, Knobelsdorff was fired in 1746. Jan Bouman, a Dutch architect, finished the project. During the 19th century, the palace became a residence of Frederick William IV. He employed the architect Ludwig Persius to restore and enlarge the palace, while Ferdinand von Arnim was charged with improving the grounds and thus the view from the palace. The town of Potsdam, with its palaces, was a favourite place of residence for the German imperial family until the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1918. After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Frederick's body was returned to the palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created. Sanssouci and its extensive gardens became a World Heritage Site in 1990 under the protection of UNESCO; in 1995, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg was established to care for Sanssouci and the other former imperial palaces in and around Berlin. These palaces are now visited by more than two million people each year from all over the world.

Sanssouci Park is a large park surrounding Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, Germany, built under Frederick the Great in the mid-1700s. Following the terracing of the vineyard and the completion of the palace, the surroundings were included in the structure. A baroque flower garden with lawns, flower beds, hedges and trees was created. In the hedge quarter 3,000 fruit trees were planted. The greenhouses of the numerous nurseries contained oranges, melons, peaches and bananas. The goddesses Flora and Pomona, who decorate the entrance obelisk at the eastern park exit, were placed there to highlight the connection of a flower, fruit and vegetable garden. Along with the Sanssouci Palace and other neaby palaces and parks, Sanssouci Park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990 for its unique architectural unity and testimony to 18th and 19th century landscaping in Europe.

The Botanical Garden in Potsdam (German: Botanischer Garten Potsdam or Botanischer Garten der Universität Potsdam), is a botanical garden and arboretum maintained by the University of Potsdam. It has a total area of 8.5 hectares, of which 5 hectares are open to the public, and is located immediately southwest of the Orangery Palace at Maulbeerallee 2, Potsdam, in the German state of Brandenburg. It is open daily; an admission fee is charged for the glasshouses only (2017). The garden was established in 1950 on two adjacent plots of land: part of the Sanssouci Park, and the Paradise Garden (about 2.5 hectares). After World War II, the Sanssouci park was controlled by the Red Army, and briefly formed a branch of the Moscow Botanical Garden of Academy of Sciences. In 1950 today's garden was created at the northern edge of Sanssouci with the Maulbeerallee dividing the garden into two distinct areas. To the north is the Paradise Garden, now a teaching and display garden; and to the south side is the institute building, greenhouses, and outdoor space. Today the garden cultivates about 9,000 taxa, with excellent collections of succulents (880), Begoniaceae (89 spp.), Araceae (c.250 spp.), Aizoaceae (c.260 spp.), Haworthia (55 spp.), ferns (230), Australian Proteaceae, orchids (320), chimaeras, invasive species, and Chinese medical herbs. The garden cultivates about 4,000 taxa outdoors, including 50 species from Brandenburg that are threatened with extinction. Major outdoor sections include an arboretum; collections from East Asia and Eurasian steppes; the Central European deciduous forest; North American prairies; an alpine garden; rhododendrons; wild flowers; a rose garden; marsh and aquatic plants; morphological gardens illustrating a variety of leaves, shoots, roots, flowers, and fruit; useful plants including dyeing, fiber, and food crops; medicinal and aromatic plants; and protected and endangered plants from Germany. The garden's ten greenhouses (approximately 3,000 m2 total area) contain about 4,600 tropical and subtropical species in a palm house, epiphyte house, orchid house, fern house, cactus house, aquarium house, Victoria house, etc. These houses also contain coffee and cocoa trees, sugarcane, cotton, cassava, guava, begonias, and carnivorous plants.

The Picture Gallery (German: Bildergalerie) in the Sanssouci Park of Potsdam was built in 1755–64 during the reign of Frederick II of Prussia under the supervision of Johann Gottfried Büring. The Picture Gallery is situated east of the palace and is the oldest extant museum built for a ruler in Germany.

Dragon House (German Drachenhaus) is a historical building in Potsdam, Germany, built by King Frederick the Great of Prussia on the southern slope of the Klausberg, which borders the northern edge of Sanssouci Park. It was constructed between 1770 and 1772 in the prevailing Chinoiserie taste of the time, designed to imitate a Chinese pagoda. Carl von Gontard was commissioned to build it. The house served as the residence of the vineyard's vintner.The Dragon House is named after the sixteen dragons on the corners of its concave roofs. Six years after the construction of the Chinese House in Sanssouci Park, Frederick's enthusiasm for Chinoiserie park structures was expressed once again with this creation. Frederick the Great was stimulated to build in a Far Eastern style by Sir William Chambers's Designs of Chinese Buildings" (1757) and from his Plans, elevations, section and perspective views of the gardens and buildings at Kew" (1763). These architectural reference books were given to Frederick by the author, who had created for Augusta, Princess of Wales a large garden at Kew (near London), in which there still stands Chambers's many-tiered tapering Great Pagoda, completed in 1762. The Dragon House at Sanssouci was built on an octagonal plan, with four floors not only to be decorative, but also as living quarters for the wine-growers who worked on the neighbouring Weinberg. However, they did not move into the pagoda. To save the pagoda from its dilapidated state, it had to be restored in 1787. Ever since then it has been constantly inhabited by the overseer of the Belvedere on the Klausberg. Over the years, because of its inhabitation, an additional room, a laundry and three stables have extended the two rooms—a kitchen and an entrance hall—of the structure. The Dragon House has been used since 1934 in a gastronomical capacity.

The Neptune Grotto (German: Neptungrotte) close to the Obelisk entrance in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, was created by Frederick the Great between 1751 and 1757 to beautify the park. Built following plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff it arose as a representation of the revived interest in garden architecture. The grotto ought to have been a component of the numerous fountains of the park, which did not function at that time, owing to a lack of technical knowledge. The trident wielding god of the sea, Neptune, establishes a relationship to water. The conches on the sides, arranged into the shape of waterfalls and the great shell inside, made from many real shells, are a characteristic theme of Rococo.

The Biosphäre Potsdam (7,000 m²) is an indoor tropical botanical garden located in the Volkspark Potsdam, a park between the Sanssouci Park and the Neuer Garten Potsdam (New Garden) at Georg-Hermann-Allee 99, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany. It is open daily; an admission fee is charged. The garden contains approximately 20,000 tropical plants representing about 350 species, including orchids, epiphytes, and trees about 14 metres in height, including a palm grove and mangrove swamp. It also includes tropical crops, a waterfall, two lakes, and various types of tropical wildlife, including iguanas, snakes, spiders, frogs, geckos, and pheasants, as well as a butterfly house containing about 30 butterfly species.