Potsdam

Travel times from Erfurt:
Train – 4 hours
Car – 2½ hours

The traditional Potsdam Christmas market is situated in the historical city center on Brandenburger Street near Sanssouci Castle. The market offers arts and crafts and samples of the city’s specialty cake, the “Märkische Küche.” In the Bohemian village of Potsdam-Babelsberg, the Bohemian Christmas Market takes place with traditional craftsmanship and typical sweets of Advent among the village’s 18th-century “Weberhäusern“ (weaver houses).

Krongut Bornstedt, the former country estate of Prussian royalty, provides a wonderful backdrop for an historic, and very romantic, Christmas market where ceramics, glass, Christmas decorations from the Erzgebirge region (a mountain range), metal and wood works, jewelry, and even Christmas trees are sold. Situated in the midst of this UNESCO world cultural heritage site, the market has a nostalgic atmosphere with its children’s railway and steam-powered merry-go-round, dating to 1893. In Potsdam’s famous Dutch Quarter, the “Sintaklaas Christmas market“ takes place in Dutch tradition with culinary delights from Holland.

Beyond its Christmas festivities, the main attraction for palatial Potsdam is its extensive landscape of castles, palaces and sprawling parks. From the 17th through 20th centuries, Prussian kings commissioned the best artists of their time to build elaborate palaces and gardens in Potsdam, a center of Prussia and home of the royal residence. In the 19th century, renowned landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné unified these riches into such a harmonious landscape that UNESCO placed it on the list of World Heritage sites in 1991.

For most visitors, it’s Sanssouci Park that’s the prime attraction. It covers 724 acres—compared to Central Park’s 840—and has three palaces: Sanssouci Palace, the New Palace and Charlottenhof Palace.

A king who joined his troops on the battlefield, Frederick the Great commissioned Sanssouci Palace in 1747 as a summer palace where he could have a respite from battle sans souci—without worry. Visitors today still benefit from his stately escape, so check your worries at the palace gates to enjoy splendid gardens and a collection of breathtaking architecture and adornment. Most of what visitors see is the ornate original—not reconstructions or duplicates—and perhaps German’s most impressive example of rococo architecture.

Although Cecilienhof is the youngest of the Hohenzollern palaces, it carries perhaps the greatest direct significance for Americans and modern Europe. It was here that the victorious powers of World War II met from June 17 to August 2, 1945 for the Potsdam Conference. Churchill, Truman and Stalin enjoyed the calm and luxurious surroundings of the Cecilia Court Palace as they discussed how to partition post-war Germany.

There is plenty to explore in Potsdam regarding its former Communist rule. Signs still remain from those times, which after all ended barely two decades ago. As recently as 1994, the city still had 60,000 Russian soldiers. And you are now free to wander the former “Forbidden City,” a walled-off villa district once controlled by the KGB.