Orangery Palace

The Orangery Palace, also called the New Orangery, stands on the northern ridge of Sanssouci Park in Potsdam. Friedrich Wilhelm IV had it built between 1851 and 1864 from his own sketches, worked up by architects Friedrich August Stueler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse. The Italianate building with its 300-metre-long plant halls combined a winter garden for Mediterranean plants with a deliberate echo of the Villa Medici in Rome, since the king regarded Italy as his ideal landscape. The central Raphael Hall is hung with 50 copies of famous Raphael paintings. The palace forms part of the UNESCO-listed Palaces and Parks of Potsdam. Today visitors can climb the tower for a panorama over Sanssouci, and the hall still shelters historic potted plants in winter.