Every design for Oranienburg

Oranienburg was called Bötzow until Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau took a liking to it. She was so taken with the town that her husband, Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, gave her the whole region, and the palace she had built in the Dutch style gave Oranienburg its new name.

Today life here is shaped by water and by Berlin. The Havel and the Oder-Havel-Kanal run through town, the capital's centre lies some thirty-five kilometres to the south, and on a fine afternoon the Schlosspark Oranienburg fills with walkers. The darker chapters are never far away: the Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen stands on the edge of town, a place people visit quietly and remember for a long time.

But it is Schloss Oranienburg that gives the place its face, the palace a princess loved enough to lend the whole town her family's name, and the one corner of the map that everyone from here would point to first.