The story of this place
Frederick II sketched the design himself, and in 1747 his architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff completed a single-storey vineyard palace whose French name — 'sans souci', without cares — declared its purpose. Here the warrior-king who had just seized Silesia hosted Voltaire, debated philosophy in French, and played flute concertos in a mirrored music room. He forbade women, courtiers, and ceremony. When he died in 1786 he asked to be buried beside his greyhounds on the terrace; instead his body was hidden for two centuries and only reburied at Sanssouci in 1991. Visitors still leave potatoes on his grave, honouring the crop he forced on Prussia.