More than 300 years ago …
… at the western foot of the Spreebogen: the small village of Lietzow, a quarter of an hour’s walk from your property. Where your new home on the riverbank will soon be built, there was only forest and fields back then. But the quiet village life soon changed radically.
After the wedding, the busy princess Sophie Charlotte from Hanover received the village Lietzow as a gift from her husband, Friedrich III. She built herself a castle and called it “Lietzenburg”. Below our Charlottenbogen a path led there from Berlin. A few years before her death the princess became queen – crowned by her husband. When the king visited his queen (allegedly only when she expressly invited him), he travelled by coach on this route or in “treck barges” on the water from Berlin to her castle. He had the boats built especially for this purpose.
The free spirit queen dedicated herself in her castle to her love of music and philosophy. In this way she was able to avoid the courtly intrigues and power games at the Berlin court.
For her husband’s birthday she entertained the court with ballets, opera performances, concerts – her son, later to become the ‘Soldier King’, entertained the guests with warlike spectacles. The great scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was also a frequent visitor there.
Sophie Charlotte was intelligent and beautiful and died quite young. Soon after her death the king renamed the castle and so her name remained: Charlottenburg Palace.
