Every design for Potsdam

Did you learn to swim in one of Potsdam's lakes, or cycle past palace railings without giving them a second glance? Brandenburg's capital sits on the Havel right beside Berlin, yet for the people who live here it is a world of its own: around twenty lakes and rivers within the city limits, wooded moraine hills, and only a quarter of the land built up.

A summer evening by the Heiliger See or the Griebnitzsee has its own calm, once the day visitors have left Sanssouci and the parks belong to the neighbourhood again. Growing up here means growing up among the residences of the Prussian kings – the Chinesisches Haus, the Marmorpalais, the Bildergalerie – and treating the paths between them as the ordinary way home. Over in Babelsberg, the film studio founded in 1912 is the oldest large-scale studio in the world, and in 2019 Potsdam became a UNESCO City of Film.

Then there is the Glienicker Brücke over the water, the Belvedere auf dem Pfingstberg looking down on the lakes, and Potsdam's own Brandenburger Tor – proof that this city never needed to borrow anything from its big neighbour.