Potsdam lies just outside Berlin, in a landscape of lakes, rivers and woods along the Havel, and for over two centuries it was the summer residence of the Prussian kings and German emperors. Frederick the Great built the palace of Sanssouci here in the 1740s, a single-storey Rococo palace above terraced vineyards, where he wanted to live without worries, as its name suggests. His successors added more palaces, gardens and follies, and today the ensemble, together with sites in Berlin, forms one of Germany's largest UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The Park Sanssouci is vast, with the main palace, the New Palace, the Chinese House, the Orangery and the Roman Baths among its buildings. Frederick is buried on the terrace of Sanssouci, next to his dogs, as he wished, and visitors leave potatoes on his grave, in honour of his promotion of the crop in Prussia. The New Garden, on the shores of the Heiliger See, has the Cecilienhof Palace, where Truman, Stalin and Churchill, later replaced by Attlee, met in 1945 for the Potsdam Conference to decide the fate of post-war Germany.
The Glienicke Bridge, which links Potsdam to Berlin over the Havel, was on the border between East and West during the Cold War and was used for exchanges of spies, earning it the nickname Bridge of Spies. Potsdam's old town includes a Dutch quarter of red-brick houses built for Dutch craftsmen in the eighteenth century.
The riding around Potsdam is flat but pleasant. The roads along the lakes and through the forests of Brandenburg are quiet and scenic, especially toward Werder, famous for its fruit orchards and blossom festival, and toward Caputh, where Albert Einstein had a summer house. Traffic in Potsdam and Berlin is heavy, and the cities have a lot of cobblestones and tram rails, which can be slippery when wet.
Potsdam has every service, and Berlin is close by. Local food includes Brandenburg asparagus in spring and fish from the lakes. Late spring and early autumn are the best times to visit the parks.