Charlottenburg Palace and the garden as well came to existence in 1695-1699 as a summer residence for the Elector Prince Friedrich III and his wife Sophie Charlotte. The architect Johann Nering designed the facility in the modern Baroque ornamentation and this style was kept in the further development of the palace as well. Firstly under the name Lietzenburg, the crowned Prussian Emperor Friedrich I renamed the complex Charlottenburg in honour of his deceased wife. In the beginning of the 18th Century, also the Orangerie (Greenhouse) and some other Baroque buildings were erected. Later during the same century, the generations of emperors used Charlottenburg either for official needs only or for a place of residence (Friedrich II). These emperors left their mark on the palace’s construction and multitude of buildings as well. The current layout of the complex was, however, accomplished in the 19th Century under the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm II who had the summer and the winter houses built in the New Wing of the palace that was brought to existence by his ancestor Friedrich II. Friedrich Wilhelm II also commissioned the construction of the Schlosstheater which played a significant role in the German theatre history. At this time also the Small Greenhouse was built.

The garden to the palace Charlottenburg was founded simultaneously with the palace itself at the end of the 17th Century and since then they form an undisturbed unity. At first the garden was designed as a French Baroque style, decorative one, with geometric and colourful parterre that could be marveled at from the palace’s windows. The architect who worked on the layout of the early Baroque Charlottenburg palace park and added a lot of fountain facilities was Simeon Godeau, an apprentice of the renowned French garden architect Le Notre. In 1788, under the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm II the park was gradually redesigned from a French Baroque garden into an English landscape park. Many plans were submitted for the park’s new layout, including such of the great garden architect Lenne and the royal gardeners Eyserbecks and Steiner. The real works, however, started in 1819 and vast simple lawn areas and groups of trees came instead the geometric ornaments. Not only the types of plants and their mapping in the park were changed but also the form of the banks of the Karpfenteich (Carps’ pond) and other brooks was intervened.

An attempt to return the earliest Baroque shape of the Charlottenburg garden was made by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who even let the grove behind the Greenhouse grow as he remembered it from his childhood. The damages of the World Wars didn’t miss this wonderful amenity, though, and today the embroidery of the original Baroque garden doesn’t even resemble the modern one that is made according to old books. The fountains are also bigger in size than the first, 17th Century ones. The trees of the park hide the Belvedere teahouse created by Carl Langhans at the end of the 18th Century. Other curious spots to visit in the Charlottenburg park except the Belvedere teahouse is the Mausoleum the Empress Luise built at the beginning of the 19th Century and the New Pavilion in Naples villa style developed by the architect Schinkel for Emperor Friedrich Wilhelm III. Schlosspark Charlottenburg has but a charming spirit of antiquity that is to be revealed to and felt by its visitors.