Sanssouci Picture Gallery (Bildergalerie)
A long golden hall east of Sanssouci Palace, built by Frederick the Great between 1755 and 1764 as the oldest surviving purpose-built museum in Germany. Inside, Caravaggio, Rubens and van Dyck hang frame to frame above a marble floor.
About this place
The Picture Gallery stands on the site of a royal greenhouse where Frederick the Great once grew figs and melons. When his art buying outgrew the rooms of Sanssouci, he had architect Johann Gottfried Büring replace the hothouse with a single-storey gallery crowned by a central dome, completed in 1764 despite the chaos of the Seven Years War. Eighteen marble allegories of the arts and sciences by Johann Gottlieb Heymüller and Johann Peter Benckert line the garden facade, and the interior is a continuous hall of gilded stucco, a diamond-patterned floor of white and yellow Italian marble, and paintings hung densely from eye level to the ceiling. The collection was raided by Napoleon in 1806, thinned for Berlin's Altes Museum in 1830 and scattered by the Second World War, yet today around 140 works are back on the walls, including Caravaggio's Incredulity of Saint Thomas, seven paintings by Rubens and five by van Dyck. After a full restoration the gallery reopened in 1996.
Key facts
- 1764 year — Completion of the oldest surviving purpose-built museum building in Germany
- 18 marble statues — Allegories of the arts and sciences stand between the windows of the garden facade
- 140 paintings — Works by Caravaggio, Rubens, van Dyck and others hang densely on the green walls today
📍 Wachtreppe 4, 14469, Potsdam