Royal Playhouse (Potsdam)

Potsdam (German pronunciation: [ˈpɔt͡sdam] (listen)) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It directly borders the German capital, Berlin, and is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel some 25 kilometres (16 miles) southwest of Berlin's city centre. Potsdam was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Kaiser until 1918. Its planning embodied ideas of the Age of Enlightenment: through a careful balance of architecture and landscape, Potsdam was intended as "a picturesque, pastoral dream" which would remind its residents of their relationship with nature and reason.The city, which is over 1000 years old, is widely known for its palaces, its lakes, and its overall historical and cultural significance. Landmarks include the parks and palaces of Sanssouci, Germany's largest World Heritage Site, as well as other palaces such as the Orangery Palace, the New Palace, the Cecilienhof Palace, or the Charlottenhof Palace. Potsdam was also the location of the significant Potsdam Conference in 1945, the conference where the three heads of government of the USSR, the US, and the UK decided on the division of Germany following its surrender, a conference which defined Germany's history for the following 45 years. Babelsberg, in the south-eastern part of Potsdam, was already by the 1930s the home of a major film production studio and it has enjoyed success as an important center of European film production since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Filmstudio Babelsberg is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world.Potsdam developed into a centre of science in Germany in the 19th century. Today, there are three public colleges, the University of Potsdam, and more than 30 research institutes in the city.

The Berlin Gate (Berliner Tor) is a largely vanished city gate in Potsdam, on the corner Türkstraße of Berliner Straße— it was originally at the end of Charlottenstrasse, but when the city wall was moved in 1752 the gate was rebuilt on its final site by Jan Bouman. It was badly damaged by bombing in 1945 and only one wing remains.

The Alte Rathaus is a Palladian building in the Old Market Square in Potsdam. It was built for Frederick the Great between 1753 and 1755 to designs by Johann Boumann and Carl Ludwig Hildebrandt. It was modelled on the Palazzo Angarano in Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio but never built. It was damaged by the 1945 air raid on Potsdam and rebuilt between 1961 and 1966. It has housed the Potsdam Museum.

The Palast Barberini, more recently also known as the Palais Barberini, was a classicist-baroque town house built under the Prussian King Frederick II according to designs by Carl von Gontard between 1771 and 1772 at Humboldtstraße 5/6 in Potsdam. Its main façade faces the Alter Markt with the Potsdam City Palace and the St. Nicholas church. The building was named after the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which the king had chosen as a model. The Potsdam recreation of the Italian model formed the monumental south-eastern end of the Alter Markt and, together with the neighboring Noacksches Haus at Humboldtstraße 4, also designed by Gontard, was one of the last buildings to be built around the square under Frederick II. In the middle of the 19th century, the palace building was extended by two side wings at the rear facing the Havel according to designs by Ludwig Persius and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse and used as a venue for Potsdam's cultural and club life. The Palast Barberini was largely destroyed in an air raid on April 14, 1945 and the ruins were demolished during the Soviet Occupation Zone. The site was then used as a green space and parking lot for a long time. As part of the redevelopment of the center of Potsdam with the reconstruction of the city palace as a new state parliament building and other buildings in the neighborhood, the Palast Barberini was rebuilt from 2013 to the end of 2016 with an exterior largely based on the original for use as the art gallery Museum Barberini after donations from the entrepreneur Hasso Plattner.

The Museum Barberini is an art museum in Potsdam opened in 2017. Its exhibitions range from the so-called Old Masters to contemporary art, with an emphasis on impressionist painting. Centered around works from the collection of its founder and patron Hasso Plattner, the Barberini presents three temporary exhibitions per year, featuring loans from international museums and private collections. Academic conferences serve to prepare these exhibitions. At the same time, shorter gallery displays – the so-called “art histories” – put works from the collection into constantly shifting contexts. The museum aims to offer a diverse programme of events and educational activities as well as digital offers like the Barberini App and the 4K Smart Wall in the museum. The director of the Museum Barberini is Ortrud Westheider.

St. Nicholas Church (German: St. Nikolaikirche) in Potsdam is a Lutheran church under the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg and Silesian Upper Lusatia of the Evangelical Church in Germany on the Old Market Square (Alter Markt) in Potsdam. The central plan building in the Classicist style and dedicated to Saint Nicholas was built to plans by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the years 1830 to 1837. The tambour of the 77-metre-high church that towers above the roofs of the city was built later, from 1843 to 1850. Its construction was taken over by Ludwig Persius and, from 1845, Friedrich August Stüler. Towards the end of the Second World War, the church was hit during the British air raid on Potsdam and subsequently badly damaged by Soviet artillery fire. After many years of rebuilding the church was re-consecrated in 1981 by the Evangelical Parish of St. Nicholas, Potsdam, and, today, is open to visitors. In addition to the normal church services, concert events are also held in the church.

The Old Market Square (German: Alter Markt) is a centrally located square in downtown Potsdam which forms the historical centre of the city. The square consists of the area around St. Nicholas' Church. Today the term refers in particular to the area directly in front of the church. It is bordered by several prestigious historical buildings. The square has been the site of much architectural reconstruction work in recent years which has restored much historic building fabric that was lost in World War Two.

The Heilig-Geist-Kirche, Heiliggeistkirche or Heiligengeistkirche was a church in Potsdam dedicated to the Holy Spirit. It was built in 1726-1728 to Baroque designs by Pierre de Gayette and Johann Friedrich Grael with an 86-metre-high tower. It, the Garrison Church and the Nikolaikirche formed the "three church view". It burned down in the Second World War. The SED leadership had the nave ruins demolished in 1961 and the tower blown up in 1974. Since 1997 the Residenz Heilig Geist Park old people's home has stood on the site, with a tower intended to evoke the former church tower.

The Dutch Quarter (Holländisches Viertel) is a neighborhood in Potsdam, consisting of 134 red Dutch brick buildings, almost all of which have been renovated. It was built from 1733 to 1740 and designed by Jan Bouman following the order of Frederick William I of Prussia.

The Nuthe is a river in Brandenburg, Germany, left tributary of the Havel. Its total length is 65 kilometres (40 mi). The Nuthe originates in the Fläming region, near Niedergörsdorf. It flows north through Jüterbog, Luckenwalde, Trebbin and Saarmund. The Nuthe joins the Havel in central Potsdam. It has been said that crossing the Nuthe three times in a row is good luck.

The Roman Catholic Church of Ss. Peter and Paul is centrally located in the centre of Potsdam, and ends the Brandenburger Strasse to the east, at the western end of which is the Potsdamer Brandenburger Gate. The present church building was completed in 1870 and served equally the Potsdam parishioners (now part of the Archdiocese of Berlin) and the Catholic soldiers who were stationed in the city. Since 1992 it has had the status of a provost church.

The Potsdam City Palace (German: Potsdamer Stadtschloss) is a building in Potsdam, Germany, located on the Old Market Square, next to the St. Nicholas' Church (Nikolaikirche). It was the second official residence (the winter residence) of the margraves and electors of Brandenburg, later kings in Prussia, kings of Prussia and German emperors. Heavily damaged in World War II and later dismantled by the East German communist regime, the partial reconstruction, with historic facades and a modern interior, was completed in late 2013. The building has since served to house the parliament of the federal state of Brandenburg.