In the quiet northern reaches of Potsdam’s New Garden, near the cold waters of Lake Jungfernsee, stands Cecilienhof Palace. Completed on October 1, 1917, for 1,498,000 Reichsmarks, this mock-Tudor manor house was the final residence built by the Hohenzollern dynasty. Architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg designed the exterior with dark timber framing and fifty-five unique, highly decorative brick chimney stacks. He hid the vast scale of the 176-room palace by grouping its wings around five quiet courtyards.

Inside, the building reflects the personal tastes and sudden displacements of its residents. Crown Princess Cecilie moved here in August 1917, giving birth to her youngest daughter, Princess Cecilie, in September. She slept in a private dressing room crafted to mimic a polished ocean liner cabin, designed by Paul Ludwig Troost. In the Great Hall, a massive oak staircase, a gift from the city of Danzig, rises twelve meters toward a decorative timber ceiling.

In July 1945, the palace became the stage for the Potsdam Conference. Soviet soldiers quickly prepared the site, planting a large red star of geraniums in the central courtyard to signal their military dominance. They cleared the royal furniture and brought in a ten-foot-wide round table for the Great Hall. Here, Harry S. Truman, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and later Clement Attlee negotiated the postwar division of Europe. The leaders worked in the private quarters of the exiled royals. Truman drafted orders in the Crown Prince’s wood-paneled smoking room, Churchill read maps in the library, and Stalin occupied Cecilie’s music salon.

Today, Cecilienhof is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The palace closed its doors on November 1, 2024, for a major restoration under the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, with a planned reopening in autumn 2027. While the interior undergoes preservation, the red flower star still blooms in the courtyard, and the silent brick chimneys stand against the sky, preserving the memory of the days when the modern world was partitioned.