Visiting Potsdam and the Sanssouci Palace in Berlin, Germany: Part 4

On my last full day in Berlin, I signed up for a far happier tour than of the previous day: Sanssouci Palace and Potsdam. Our first stop after about an hour on the train from Berlin was Potsdam. Potsdam was a planned city where the Prussian kings and German Kaiser lived until the early 20th century.

St. Nikolaikirche

We explored the area around the Alter Markt, behind the Landtag Brandenburg, in front of St. Nikolaikirche. From there, we made our way to Brandenburger Tor, Potsdam's version of the Brandenburg Gate, which opens up to an adorable street full of pedestrians, restaurants, and shops. We stopped here for about an hour for lunch.

Brandenburger Tor

Brandenburger Str.

After lunch, we hopped on a bus to the Sanssouci Palace. The best way to enter the area is through one of the entrances at the side of the garden. While the most famous entrance is at the front of the palace due to the garden, it is extremely packed with tourists, and impossible to capture good photos. By entering off to the side, we were able to visit the palace then walk to the top of the garden for photos.

Sanssouci Palace Garden Side Entrance

The Sanssouci Palace was the summer palace of Frederick the Great in the 1700s. He hired an architect to design the palace in a similar style to Versailles, although it is far smaller. Because of the era, the king and architect had numerous arguments in regards to the style of the palace that the king wanted and the architect's disagreement that it did not fit with the style of the time. The first architect was eventually fired and a second architect completed the palace to the king's liking. The palace has now been open for tourism since the 1990s and is truly worth a visit.

Sanssouci Palace

After the Sanssouci Palace, we took a short bus ride to the Neues Palace. This is one of my favorites from the whole trip, possibly because it is pink. While we could not visit inside, the outside is absolutely beautiful. For all the opulence displayed by the various palaces and castles I visited, this one, despite its size, seemed more subdued, which sounds ridiculous when you look at it. Maybe because the gardens around it were not monstrous-sized, it felt more homey than the others (yes, the 200-room palace felt homey).

Neues Palace Front

Neues Palace Side

Neues Palace Back

I thought it was super interesting too that across the street there was a similarly sized palace, called Communs. Apparently, this was the servants' home, as they were not allowed to live in the palace itself. There was a tunnel underground as well to connect the two palaces. Today, both palaces are used by the University of Potsdam.

At the end of the day, there was about an hour train ride back to Berlin, where I promptly fell asleep after the hot day walking around and almost missed my stop. The next morning I left for Salzburg, Austria, the home of The Sound of Music!

Side note: Because I stayed mainly in hostels during my trip, the Wi-Fi was typically too slow for me to upload blog posts full of images. So now that I'm back home, I'm playing catch up for my whole trip. However, since it was a two-month trip, it will likely take much longer than two months for me to upload it all, but many more posts to come still!