Charlottenburg Palace

The New Wing at the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin houses the Gallery of Romanticism. It displays works of the Romantic School (especially those by C. D. Friedrich, K. F. Schinkel, C. Plechen), the Classical period (J. A. Koch, G. Schick, Ph. O. Runge), the Nazarene (J. F. Overbeck, P. von Cornelius) and the Biedermeier (including Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, M. von Schwindt, L. Richter and C. Spitzweg).The C. D. Friedrich collection of 23 paintings is the most important in the world. Notable works include "The Abbey in the Oak Forest" and "Woman at her Window".

The Museum of Prehistory in Berlin's Charlottenburg Palace is housed in the Langhans Wing (West Wing), in what was originally the palace theater. Although much important material (including part of Schliemann's finds from Troy) was lost during the Second World War, the collection has been supplemented by new acquisitions and excavation material and presents an excellent survey of the prehistory of Europe and the East. The exhibits here are supplemented by those in the museum of the same name in the Bode Museum.Room 1: Material (originals or reproductions) of the hunting, gathering and fishing cultures of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Ages (to 5000 BC). Room 2: farming cultures of the Neolithic Age (to 2000 BC) and material from western Asia (including the remaining parts of Schliemann's Trojan finds).Rooms 3 and 4: Bronze and Iron Age material, and prehistoric material from Brandenburg and the Berlin area (including the tomb chamber of a royal tomb at Seddin and a gold hoard from Eberswalde).

The Historic Apartments in Berlin's Charlottenburg Palace have been restored to their original form and decoration, with tapestries, silk damasks, paneling, mirrors and ceiling paintings. At the west end of the central range are the apartments occupied by Frederick I (bedroom, study, Red Braid Room, audience chamber) and his second wife Sophie Charlotte (audience chamber, antechamber, living apartments), with Chinese lacquer furniture or European imitations and inlaid and carved furniture of about 1700. The pictures are by Pesne, Schoojans, Weidemann and other artists; the tapestries are from the Berlin manufactory of Charles Vigne. The Porcelain Cabinet contains East Asian porcelain of the 17th and 18th C. The Palace Chapel, in which King Frederick William II was married morganatically to Countess Julie von Ingenheim in 1787, has been completely rebuilt.At the east end of the central range, on the ground floor, are the Oak Gallery, in which concerts of chamber music are given from time to time, the apartments occupied by Frederick William in summer and the apartments of Frederick William III. They are furnished with chinoiserie and furniture, pictures and porcelain of the Biedermeier period.On the upper floor of this wing are the apartments of Frederick the Great and the two State Rooms, two richly decorated Roccoco rooms (by Knobelsdorff and Nahl) which have been restored to their original form after their destruction during the war. The State Dining Room (also called the White Room) has walls faced with stucco in imitation of pink marble. The Golden Gallery, 42 m/138ft in length, has a riot of decoration in gilded stucco. The apartments of Frederick the Great on this floor contain an important collection of pictures, especially by Watteau, including "By Ship to Cythera" in the second apartment beyond the Golden Gallery, and other works from the French School at the beginning of the 18th C.

The Charlottenburg Palace park - one of the most popular of Berlin's parks - was laid out in the French style in 1697 by Siméon Godeau, but in the early 19th C. much of it was remodeled by Peter Joseph Lenné as an English-style landscaped park. After the Second World War it was restored to its original Baroque form. The 24 marble busts of Roman emperors and empresses on the garden front of the palace were removed in 1989. The little iron bridge near the carp pond dates from 1800. In the park there is a marble obelisk by the Yugoslav Braco Dimitrijevic (1979).The New Pavilion (Schinkel Pavilion) at the east entrance to the park was built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1788 in the style of a Neapolitan villa for Frederick William III and his second wife Princess Liegnitz.In the northern part of the park is the Belvedere, built by Carl Gotthard Langhans as a tea house, and which now contains a collection of Berlin porcelain of the 18th and early 19th C.On the west side of the park, at the end of an avenue of firs, stands a small Doric temple with columns of Brandenburg granite. This is the Mausoleum built by Heinrich Gentz for Frederick William III as the last resting place of Queen Luise. It was completed in 1812 and extended in 1841 and 1889.The Mausoleum stands in a clump of trees with a flight of eight steps leading up to a chamber with four Doric columns which contains the sarcophagus and a statue of Queen Luise, both by Christian Daniel Rauch. The Queen is represented sleeping with folded hands and draped in a loose garment. Thirty years later her husband was also buried here, in a sarcophagus which was also the work of Rauch. His statue depicts him in a plain military cloak. Later burials here include Prince Albert (1837-1906), the Emperor William I (1797-1888) and his wife the Empress Augusta (1811-90), and Princess Liegnitz, second wife of Frederick William III (1800-73). The heart of Frederick William IV (eldest son of King Frederick William III, 1795- 1861) is contained in a stone casket.

The statue of the Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg, stands in the grand Courtyard of the Charlottenbrug Palace in Berlin. It is one of the finest statues of the Baroque period. Frederick William's son, the Elector Frederick III, commissioned this monumental piece from Andreas Schlüter to honor his father as founder of the State of Brandenburg and Prussia. The casting of the statue began in Oct. 1700 and the monument was ceremonially unveiled on July 12, 1703, the Elector's birthday. The Great Elector is represented partly in Roman and partly in contemporary garb, with a bronze breast-plate and a flowing full-bottomed wig, holding out his baton in a commanding gesture. On the marble base (a copy, the original being in the Bode Museum) is a finely modeled shield with a Latin inscription dedicated by the son to his father. At each end of the base are fettered slaves, symbolizing the enemies overcome by the Great Elector. The statue originally stood on the Long Bridge (Elector's Bridge, today the Town Hall Bridge or Rathausbrücke) near the Municipal Palace. In 1943 it was removed for safety, but the boat transporting it was overloaded and sank in Tegel Harbor. The statue was recovered in 1949, and three years later was set up in the courtyard of Charlottenburg.