Berlin’s biggest palace precinct, Schloss Charlottenburg, is a complex of vast wings and gardens. Its exterior architecture is graceful and its interior decoration is opulent.

For fans of building and design, a day at Schloss Charlottenburg is like spending a day in heaven. Visitors to the palace are in company with Prussia’s greatest architects and some of Europe’s great artists.

Work started on the palace’s main wing in 1695 along Spandauer Damm near the river Spree and a village that was then known as Lietzow.

But the original “old palace” grew as its royal residents added to the complex. Andreas Schlüter designed two more wings around the present honour court.

In 1701 work began on the addition of a central tower and extensions by Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe. Only then did the residence start to reach palatial proportions. The complex, with its side wings, was beginning to develop along the lines of Versailles.

Schlüter also sculpted the equestrian statue of the ‘Great Elector’ Friedrich Wilhelm (1703), which formerly stood near Berliner Schloss. Its home now is the Charlottenburg palace honour court. The story goes that between these sites, during World War II, the statue was hidden in a Berlin lake to prevent it being melted down.

As it grew, the palace became a retreat for seven generations of Hohenzollern Prussian rulers. It reveals surprising insights into a dynasty thought of as martial leaders. The individuals are depicted in the palace’s art collections and their choices of style reveal their tastes.

A permanent exhibition examines the Hohenzollerns’ ascent from castle lords to imperial glory.

Schloss Charlottenburg is a palace of style

Baroque and Rococo are the dominant styles of the main palace.

The centre is an unusual elliptical central hall, the Ovaler Saal, with five arches. It projected into the rear garden and was matched on the upper level by a mirrored chamber with ornate ceiling cornices.

All fashions from the Baroque period to the 19th century are represented in rich halls and exquisite chambers. Some of the palace’s highlights are:

● The spectacular mirrored Porzellankabinett displays the royal collection of blue-and-white porcelain. Pieces are mounted on the walls as part of the decoration, which has an Oriental theme.
● The Eichengalerie, a Baroque chamber with oaken interior, was used for banquets.
● The palace chapel is extraordinarily opulent for such a small space. Its dazzling decoration includes angels carrying a golden crown as a centerpiece and a painted ceiling by Jan Anthonie Coxie.
● The prized green marble Rococo ballroom Goldene Galerie.
● The throne room and banqueting hall Weißer Saal, which has a painted ceiling.
● The bedchamber of the queen Sophie Charlotte, namesake of the palace.
● The silver vault, containing about 100 dinner sets from the Hohenzollern silver collections.

A palace of two tragic queens

Schloss Charlottenburg began as the summer home of a woman who did not love her husband and lord. But she managed to live her short life in the palace, where she could decide who came and went.

The queen Sophie Charlotte was one of Berlin’s intriguing personalities. A palace of taste and refinement stands fittingly as her monument today.

Sophie Charlotte was a cultured princess who was a younger sister of Britain’s first Hanoverian king, George I. At only 15 she became consort of the Brandenburg elector, later the first Prussian king Friedrich I.

Despite her gifts, she was less than happy in her marriage. But Sophie Charlotte set about creating her own court of arts, science and philosophy, regularly hosting some of the finest minds of the age.

She entrusted the palace design to the architect Johann Arnold Nering. But Nering died only months later and the project passed to Martin Grünberg, who worked on the building for about five years.

The palace was then known as Schloss Lietzenburg after the village. It did not acquire the queen’s name until after she succumbed to pneumonia in 1705, aged 36. Soon the name Charlottenburg was also applied to the district, which was later absorbed by the rapid 19th and 20th century growth of Berlin. A portrait of the queen hangs in the old palace.

King Friedrich Wilhelm III and his queen Luise lived for a time in the palace’s new wing and the couple produced nine children. Luise, also cultured, was a beloved queen. But she endeared herself most to her subjects by meeting Napoleon in 1807 in a private audience to bargain for better terms after the emperor’s defeat of Prussia.

Luise was considered an intelligent beauty and inspired warmth in all who wrote about her. She was also a favourite of artists and was the elder of the sisters sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow, a piece now standing in Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie.

But Luise, like Sophie Charlotte, died in her mid-30s, probably as the result of a surgical wound. Her bedchamber is a feature of a Schloss Charlottenburg visit today.

A reclining figure of the queen by Christian Daniel Rauch rests on her sarcophagus in the mausoleum of the palace gardens. The memory of her spirit and patriotism endures in the Luisenorden decoration. The Prussian general Blücher after her death described her as a saint.

Growth of Schloss Charlottenburg

After Sophie Charlotte’s death, Friedrich I had further palace extensions completed. These included the dome on the central tower, reaching 48 metres, and extensions on the west side including the Große Orangerie and the palace chapel. The orangerie was the wintering place for the fruit trees that spent the summer in the Baroque gardens. Today it is a scene for concerts.

But Friedrich’s successor Friedrich Wilhelm I had a sense of austerity that meant he had little to do with the palace after taking the throne in 1713.

Friedrich Wilhelm's son Frederick the Great made Schloss Charlottenburg his home after taking the Prussian throne in 1740. In many ways he shared the tastes of his grandmother, Sophie Charlotte.

Frederick preferred the palace’s rural environment to inner Berlin and it was congenial for his masonic activities. He commissioned the court architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff to design Rococo extensions including a separate east wing. These included the Goldene Galerie and Weißer Saal. The royal music chamber is of more intimate proportions. All this is now known as the “new wing”.

The two royal apartments showed the king’s love of French Baroque and today house a large collection of 18th-century French paintings. His treasured library – also French – was installed upstairs.

The vestibule of the new wing today displays Classical and Romantic sculpture. French 18th century paintings include works by Jean-Antoine Watteau, one of Frederick’s favourite painters. A more personal side to the complex Frederick is revealed by his snuff boxes in the silver vault.

But Frederick soon set his heart on building the more intimate Schloss Sanssouci in Potsdam. This became his preferred royal summer residence. A statue of him stands in front of his new wing and a famous portrait in the palace is attributed to Anton Graff.

The palace took its present shape under Friedrich Wilhelm II, who added a Neoclassical theatre at the western end. Carl Gotthard Langhans, architect of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, designed this and a smaller orangerie to its south side. The theatre was later used for public performances, but its fittings and interiors have gone with time.

During the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm IV there were Classical redesigns of first-floor chambers. His widow later lived in the palace. The last monarch to use Schloss Charlottenburg, the ailing emperor Friedrich III, acceded and died in 1888.

Extensive rebuilding of Schloss Charlottenburg was required after World War II bombing. The palace housed parts of the ancient and Classical archaeology collections now exhibited on Museum Island until 1999. The new wing, especially badly damaged, has been restored in recent decades.

Palace of gardens and pavilions

Among the glories of Schloss Charlottenburg are its gardens and pavilions, covering more than 30 hectares. The Schloßpark or Schloßgarten extends north behind the palace with its west boundary on the Spree.

Sophie Charlotte commissioned Siméon Godeau, a student of the Versailles court gardener, for the first design. The open area of sculpted gardens stretches from the north facade of the palace. The centrepiece is the fountain Schloßbrunnen.

Walking paths wind further north through grounds bordered to the east by the Spree. Here, Peter Joseph Lenné, finest of German landscape gardeners, directed the park layout in his preferred English style.

Langhans’ three-storey teahouse Belvedere (1788), secluded from the main palace, stands near the Spree bank as a vantage point. Originally it was on a small island. Its post-World War II rebuilding was confined to the exterior and access to it and its porcelain collection was closed in 2024.

The garden mausoleum (1810) by Heinrich Gentz is near the Teichgraben, part of the ornamental lakes fed by the river. It now has a copy of the Classical granite facade probably conceived by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, architect of Altes Museum, and is the resting place of Friedrich Wilhelm III and Luise. Inside are the sarcophaguses (1846) sculpted by Rauch. It was later enlarged to include the graves of the later imperial couple Wilhelm I and Augusta.

Schinkel also created the Neoclassical Neuer Pavillon by the Spree in Italianesque style as a summer house for Friedrich Wilhelm III’s second queen Auguste. Paintings by Caspar David Friedrich and sculpture by Rauch are among the exhibits, along with paintings and designs by Schinkel.

Today the old palace and new wing are treated separately, although a day visitor ticket for both is available. The pavilions are accessible only from April to October and the palace is closed Mondays. Tours are available by audio guide.

Take bus 109 or M45 to Luisenplatz, bus 309 to Schloß Charlottenburg, or S41, S42 or S46 to Westend and walk east. The U7 station Richard-Wagner-Platz is 400 metres south-east.

To appreciate all Berlin’s highlights, and get important travel tips, download Raven Guides’ comprehensive travel guide to Berlin. To read about Berlin’s other great palace, read the Raven Guides blog on the strange story of Berliner Schloss.