Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
intensive restoration - an effect that will no doubt be intensified by two years of further
work that are due to be completed in April 2014. Better is the adjacent White Hall,
whose eighteenth-century ceiling, made grungy by regular clouds of candle soot during
festivities, was replaced at the end of the nineteenth century by a marble and gold
confection with full electric illumination. Next door, the Concert Room contains a
superb collection of works by
Watteau
, including one of his greatest paintings,
he
Embarcation for Cythera
, a delicate Rococo frippery tinged with sympathy and sadness.
Also here is his
he Shop Sign
, painted for an art dealer in 1720.
10
The Schloss Gardens
Daily 9am-dusk • Free; individual attractions charge a fee
Laid out in the French style in 1697, the
Schloss Gardens
were transformed into an
English-style landscaped park in the early nineteenth century; after severe damage in
the war, they were mostly restored to their Baroque form. hough it's possible to buy
a map in the Schloss, it's easy enough to wander through the garden to the lake and the
grounds behind, which do indeed have the feel of an English park.
The Neuer Pavillon
Tues-Sun: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10am-5pm • €4, €16 combined ticket for all of Schloss Charlottenburg attractions
he first place to head before hitting the gardens proper is the
Neuer Pavillon
(also
called the Schinkel Pavillon), just to the east of the Schloss, which was designed by
Schinkel (see p.57) for Friedrich Wilhelm III, and where the king preferred to live away
from the excesses of the main building. Inside, furniture, decorative arts and paintings
from the Romantic and Biedermeier periods are on display, including works by Carl
Blechen, Schinkel and Eduard Gaertner.
The Belvedere
April-Oct Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • €3, €16 combined ticket for all of Schloss Charlottenburg attractions
Within the gardens, on the north side of the lake, is the
Belvedere
, built as a teahouse
in 1788 and today housing a collection of Berlin porcelain - tea and coffee sets,
dinnerware services and decorative pieces. Much of the craftsmanship is extremely
delicate, and pieces commemorating the fall of Napoleon or depicting scenes from the
palace and gardens have a real sense of history about them.
Mausoleum
April-Oct Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • €2, €16 combined ticket for all of Schloss Charlottenburg attractions
On the western side of the gardens, a long, tree-lined avenue leads to the hushed and
shadowy
Mausoleum
, where Friedrich Wilhelm III is buried: his sarcophagus, carved with
his image, makes him seem a good deal younger than his seventy years. Friedrich Wilhelm
had commissioned the mausoleum to be built thirty years earlier for his wife, Queen Luise,
whose own delicate sarcophagus apparently depicts her not dead but sleeping. Later burials
here include Kaiser Wilhelm I, looking every inch a Prussian king.
Museums opposite the Schloss
hough you could happily spend a whole day wandering around the Schloss and its
gardens, just across the way another group of excellent
museums
beckons. hese in
themselves could easily take an afternoon of your time.
Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg
Schlossstr. 70 • Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • €10 including Museum Berggruen, audio-guide included; a €12 Bereichskarte also includes the
Museum für Fotografie (see p.109) •
W
smb.museum • U-Richard-Wagner-Platz or bus #M45 from Bahnhof Zoo
he two buildings at the head of Schlossstrasse together served the palace's Garde du
Corps-Regiments in the late nineteenth century. he building to the east, the former
