Schloss Bellevue

Schloss Bellevue stands on the bank of the Spree in Berlin, at the edge of the Tiergarten park. It is the official residence of the Federal President of Germany. Prince August Ferdinand of Prussia, younger brother of King Frederick the Second, commissioned the house in 1786. Philipp Daniel Boumann designed it, and the building counts as the first neoclassical structure in Germany. The two-storey facade carries a central pediment on Corinthian columns, and sandstone figures on the gables show agriculture, fishing and hunting.

The prince spent his summers here, and the surrounding grounds ranked among the finest landscape gardens of the age. Visitors in the nineteenth century included Friedrich von Schiller and Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1844 the Vaterländische Galerie turned the palace into a museum of contemporary Prussian art. About twenty-one years later the museum moved out, and the Prussian court installed gardeners, maids, cooks and gamekeepers. The building survived the First World War almost unscathed, and the Weimar government housed state visitors there. The Second World War left little more than a few outer walls standing. Reconstruction ran from 1954 to 1959, and the German parliament made it a second seat and residence for the president. After reunification the president left Bonn for Berlin in 1994, and the palace became the main residence.

The president's offices sit just to the south, in a modern building of glass and black granite. Inside, a ballroom designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1791 still hosts official receptions. The Oval Saal is the only room left from the eighteenth century. The calendar holds New Year's receptions, inaugurations, state visits and banquets for foreign dignitaries, royalty among them. Once a year an open day lets you see inside. If the flag outside is down, the president is not in residence.