Out of the city - The Rough Guide to Berlin - page 166

extended and prettified it during the eighteenth century. Today it houses Potsdam's
Filmmuseum , which draws on material from Babelsberg's UFA studios nearby
(see p.173) to present both a technical and artistic history of German film from 1895
to 1980, with some particularly fascinating material concerning the immediate postwar
period. It's always been an engaging museum, with a vaguely hands-on feel, and will
reopen in 2014 following a complete refurb. he museum cinema is the best in
Potsdam and there's also a good café .
Just behind the Marstall, Am Neuen Markt leads to a few handsome and now very
rare vestiges of old Potsdam, including some improbably grand eighteenth-century
coaching stables with an entrance in the form of a triumphal arch.

Altstadt
North beyond Alter Markt, Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse passes into an area once occupied
by Potsdam's Altstadt before it was fairly comprehensively destroyed in the war. Luckily,
a couple of residential districts survived substantially intact and slowly emerge along
the north end of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse. Brandenburger Strasse , today's main
shopping street, is the key cross street.

11

Bassinplatz
Following Brandenburger Strasse a block east of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse brings you to
Bassinplatz , a grand plaza and park that's disfigured by a huge modern bus station, but
dominated by the nineteenth-century Peter-Pauls-Kirche , a replica of the campanile of
San Zeno Maggiore in Verona. At the southeastern corner of the square lies the
Französische Kirche , completed according to plans by Knobelsdorff in 1753 in imitation
of the Pantheon in Rome, a recurring theme in German architecture of the period.

Holländisches Viertel
Just north of Bassinplatz lies the appealing Holländisches Viertel or “Dutch quarter”,
where 134 gabled, red-brick houses were put up by Dutch builders for immigrants
from the Netherlands who were invited to work in Potsdam by Friedrich Wilhelm I.
he quarter has seen periods of dereliction since, but recent restoration and
gentrification has produced a small colony of trendy shops and cafés.

Brandenburger Strasse and Lindenstrasse
Gedenkstätte Lindenstr.
West of the Dutch quarter, Brandenburger Strasse leads to Park Sanssouci and forms the
backbone of a Baroque quarter - built between 1732 and 1742 on the orders of Friedrich
Wilhelm I for tradespeople as Potsdam rapidly expanded. One major cross-street is
Lindenstrasse, where, at no. 54-55, the Dutch-style Kommandantenhaus has uncomfortable
associations: until the Wende it served as a Stasi detention centre known as the “Lindenhotel”.
It now houses Gedenkstätte Lindenstrasse : you can view the chilling cells and an exhibition
details the building's use, which included a spell as a Nazi prison and “hereditary-health
court”, where decisions about compulsory sterilization were made (Tues-Sun 10am-6pm;
€1.50; €3 with tour; W gedenkstaette-lindenstrasse.de).
Further north up Lindenstrasse is the Jägertor or “Hunter's Gate”, one of Potsdam's
three surviving town gates, surmounted by a sculpture of a stag succumbing to a pack
of baying hounds. Meanwhile, the triumphal Brandenburger Tor marks the western end
of Brandenburger Strasse - built by Gontard in 1733 with a playfulness lacking in its
Berlin namesake. he Grünes Gitter park entrance lies just beyond the northwestern
corner of the adjacent Luisenplatz .

Park Sanssouci
Stretching west out of Potsdam's town centre, Park Sanssouci was built for Frederick
the Great as a retreat after he decided in 1744 that he needed a residence where he