Roman Baths (Potsdam)
The Roman Baths (
Design
While still
Style
The gardener's house (Gärtnerhaus) (1829–30) and the adjacent house for the gardener's helpers (Gärtnergehilfenhaus) (1832) were both built in Italian country villa style (Landhausstil). The Roman Bath, which gave its name to the ensemble in its entirety, was styled after ancient villas. Together with a small tea pavilion (Teepavillon) (1830), modelled on temples of classical antiquity, they form a complex of buildings tied together by pergolas, arcades and garden spaces. The individual buildings were largely inspired by Schinkel's second trip to Italy in 1828. Thus the Roman Bath, which has never actually been used as a bathing facility, came into being thanks purely to the romantic fantasy of the royal Italophile.
The names of the rooms connote a mixture of antique villas and Roman
Location
The whole nostalgic creation is on the bank of an artificial lake created during Peter Joseph Lenné's landscaping of the Charlottenhof grounds. The so-called machine pond (Maschinenteich) gets its name from a steam engine building and an adjacent pumping station torn down in 1923. The large hull of a well marks the location of the former building. The steam engine was not just responsible for keeping the artificial waters of Charlottenhof moving – its smokestacks were also a symbol of progress and what was at its time advanced technology.
Sources
- Gert Streidt, Klaus Frahm: Potsdam. Die Schlösser und Gärten der Hohenzollern. Cologne: Könemann, 1996. ISBN 3-89508-238-4
- Schloss Charlottenhof und die Römischen Bäder. Amtlicher Führer. 7th rev. ed. Potsdam: Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, 1998.
- Paul Sigel, Silke Dähmlow, Frank Seehausen and Lucas Elmenhorst: Architekturführer Potsdam - Architectural Guide. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 2006. ISBN 3-496-01325-7.
External links
- Roman Baths in Sanssouci Park - official site
