Berlin, Potsdam, Dresden - Art and architecture in Brandenburg and Saxony

Fly in the morning from London Heathrow to Berlin Brandenburg (British Airways) and drive to Dresden. Introductory guided walk before dinner. First of three nights in Dresden.

The Zwinger is a unique Baroque confection, part pleasure palace, part arena for festivities and part museum for cherished collections. Visit the excellent porcelain museum and the fabulously rich Old Masters Gallery, particularly strong on Italian and Netherlandish painting. The Green Vault of the Residenzschloss displays one of the world’s finest princely treasuries. 

Visit the great domed Frauenkirche, the Protestant cathedral. Drive to Pillnitz, a summer palace in Chinese Rococo style, with park, gardens and collections of decorative art. Take a boat trip back along the Elbe to Dresden for an optional afternoon visit of the New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum.

n the morning drive on to Potsdam. The enclosed park of Sanssouci was created as a retreat from the affairs of state by Frederick the Great. It consists of gardens, parkland, palaces, pavilions and auxiliary buildings. In the afternoon visit his relatively modest single-storey palace atop terraces of fruit trees and the exquisite Chinese teahouse. Overnight in Potsdam. 

Spend the morning on the Alter Markt, seeing the Nikolaikirche, a Classicist-style, Lutheran church. The Museum Barberini was built on the site of the original Barberini Palace, which was largely destroyed by bombing in 1945 and then demolished three years later. Walk through the city’s historical Dutch Quarter. After lunch travel to Berlin by coach. The villa of Klein-Glienicke is a dream of Italy; visit its gardens strewn with Neoclassical garden buildings. First of four nights in Berlin.

A walk to see a selection of the historic and new architecture of Berlin, passing Bebelplatz, the Gendarmenmarkt with its twin churches and concert hall, and the Humboldt-Forum, a much-anticipated and controversial new museum project on the site of the former City Palace. Spend the afternoon on ‘Museum Island’: the Bode Museum houses a splendid, comprehensive collection of European sculpture, including works by Riemenschneider, as well as Byzantine art, and the Alte Nationalgalerie houses an excellent collection of 19th-century paintings and sculptures.

A morning walk includes Unter den Linden, Peter Eisenmann’s controversial Holocaust Memorial and the unmistakable symbol of the city, the Brandenburg Gate. End at the Reichstag, a ponderous 1880s structure scarred by the vicissitudes of the 20th century, the shell now brilliantly rehabilitated by Norman Foster and topped by the famous glass dome. Lunch is at the rooftop restaurant. Visit the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the Museum of Decorative Arts, one of the many museums scattered around the ‘Kulturforum’. The Gemäldegalerie houses one of Europe’s major collections of Old Masters.

Drive to Schloss Charlottenburg, the earliest major building in Berlin, an outstanding summer palace built with a Baroque core and Rococo wings, fine interiors, paintings by Watteau, extensive gardens, pavilions and a mausoleum. The Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection of the Surrealists and their forerunners is also here.

Take a coach to Kreuzberg, passing Cold War related landmarks such as the Oberbaumbrücke and Karl-Marx Allee. Pass also the Jewish Museum, Daniel Libeskind’s jagged, lacerated, powerfully emotive extension to a Baroque palace. Pause at the Prussian National Monument for the Liberation Wars, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1821. Fly from Berlin Brandenburg to London Heathrow, arriving in the afternoon.