Potsdam - Free time at the castle

A peaceful name that conjures up distant memories of Meissen porcelain, Prussian blue and Johann Sebastian Bach cantatas. On the heights of Potsdam, next to a mill from which old-fashioned flour is still produced, stands a bright yellow jewel, supported by busty, bare-breasted caryatids: the Sans-Souci, in other words the private retreat of Frederick II of Prussia, just twenty kilometres from Berlin and already in the middle of the countryside. Why this summer residence, to which only a select few were invited? "The Sans-Souci Round Table - But is it the best known of the large park, which is home to a dozen marvellous palaces, Roman baths and mosques? No doubt because this is where the refined extravagance, the "programmed utopia of a king who was more of an aesthete than a warrior. Doubtless also because the enlightened despot left his soul behind.

As soon as Sans-Souci was built in 1747, he lived there every year from April to October, in contrast to the state palaces where he only appeared and appeared. In the succession of rooms on the ground floor, the tone is definitely rococo, but it is also that of a man of taste: the epicentre is the library, loaded with bound books, in goatskin, from floor to ceiling, all in French of course, the language of the greats of Europe, but also that of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, in fact, stayed at Sans-Souci, in a room wallpapered in carved wood, with small, highly coloured animal figures in relief. In the music room, as in most of the rooms, it is the details, at first invisible but then multiplying with patient observation, that move us: two spiders spinning their webs on a ceiling around a crystal chandelier or bunches of marble grapes falling from the fireplaces. "Everything is still intactsays Angelika Scholz, the owner.

That's what makes Sans Souci and the Neues Palais so special. Nothing has been altered. Nothing, not even the arrangement of the paintings, chosen by Frederick himself and carefully recorded since the distant 18th century. The great king was an aesthete, a philosopher and an artist. Whether he was a strategist or a conqueror, he was only a conqueror by necessity. "He was keen to impose his views on the construction of his palaces, even if his architectural ideas were not always very reasonable or even viable," continues Angelika Scholz. Yet if there is one thing that Frederick II achieved, it was a perfect osmosis between the interior and exterior. Sans-Souci is a real garden castle with vast windows. An interplay of mirrors reflects the sublime parkland and the carefully ordered succession of espaliered vines.

Aesthetics and attention to detail

Visitors will be delighted to cross this park in fine weather to reach the imposing yet little-known Neues Palais. Built in record time between 1763 and 1769, this vast edifice with over 320 rooms was intended to showcase the power of a Prussia victorious in the Seven Years' War. Designed for posterity rather than for living in, the Neues Palais is a triumphal monument to the personal and military grandeur and power of Frederick the Great at the height of his maturity. This is why a major exhibition will be held there to mark the 300th anniversary of his birth. 70 rooms will be open to the public, compared with the usual fifteen or so. The size of the space is in stark contrast to the graceful beauty of Sans-Souci, but there are still a few surprises in store: the Music Room, the Marble Gallery, the Blue Room, the King's Apartments, and above all the Grotto Room, lined with strange shells, amethysts and other semi-precious stones in the pure Baroque and Rococo tradition.

For his contemporaries, Frederick the Great was a mysterious political figure, sometimes controversial, but undeniably charismatic. For us, it's an excuse to escape from bustling Berlin for a day or a weekend.