The Pfingsberg is one of Potsdam's highest viewpoints and in the 18th and 19th centuries, the site of a private vineyard.
The owner commissioned a then-unknown Karl Friedrich Schinkel to design a tea pavilion dedicated to Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit.
From this classical antique temple-pavilion, Schinkel went on to design some of Prussia's greatest architecture.
Monarchs bought the hill and in 1847, Italophile Friederich Wilhelm IV designed the Belvedere, a massive pleasure palace inspired by Renaissance-era Italian villas.
In 1862, the brilliant landscape architect Lenné incorporated the Pomona Temple into the Belvedere landscape using a semi-circular arbour.
So that even though the Pomona Temple was slightly off symmetry, it felt like an organic part of the whole.
Lenné created paths that wound downhill, offering lines of sight and therefore connections to the rest of the Prussian parks and edifices.
A study in symmetry and proportion, the Belvedere also offers great views from its 25m-high towers and lateral colonnaded arcades.
The talented Prussian garden designer and landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné wove together the whole that is today the Unesco World Heritage Site of the palaces and parks of Potsdam and Berlin. His genius is obvious in Pfingstberg, where he used semi-circular arbours, snaking pathways and clever lines of sight to connect a monumental Italian-style palace, a Roman temple and other churches, palaces and islands in the broader landscape.
Links:
Wikipedia entry on Peter Joseph Lenné (German)
Official Website of Belvedere auf dem Pfingstberg
Wikipedia entry Belvedere auf dem Pfinstberg (German)
Wikipedia entry on the Pomona Temple (German)
Experienced: 04.11.2011 || Recounted: 24.12.2015
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