Sanssouci, Cecilienhof & New Palace: Potsdam Castles Tour

Depart Potsdam Hauptbahnhof through the inner city and the Dutch Quarter — a neighbourhood of 18th-century brick townhouses commissioned by Frederick William I to attract Dutch craftsmen. The guide introduces the Hohenzollern family's three-century relationship with Potsdam as an escape from the formality of Berlin, and the scale of the palace-building programme that made the town a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Pass the Glienicker Bridge over the Havel — the crossing between East Germany and West Berlin where the CIA and KGB conducted spy exchanges during the Cold War. Francis Gary Powers (the U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union) was exchanged here for Rudolf Abel in 1962. The bridge featured in the 2015 Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies.

Walk around Cecilienhof — the last palace built by the Hohenzollerns, completed in 1917 in neo-Tudor style for Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Cecilie. In July–August 1945, it was chosen as the conference venue where Truman (who had just learned of the successful Trinity nuclear test on the first day), Clement Attlee (who replaced Churchill mid-conference following the British election result), and Stalin negotiated Germany's post-war partition and the terms of continued Soviet involvement against Japan. The conference table and room are accessible during the stop.

Visit Alexandrowka — 13 Russian wooden log houses arranged in a cross pattern, built in 1827 by Frederick William III for the surviving members of a Russian choral ensemble that had remained in Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars. The colony is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and remains occupied today by descendants of the original settlers. It is one of the most architecturally surprising ensembles in Germany, sitting incongruously among the Prussian royal architecture.

Walk the iconic terraced gardens of Sanssouci — six vine-planted terraces rising to Frederick the Great's summer palace (1745–1747), designed by the king himself in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff. Frederick's grave is at the top of the terraces, beside the palace he loved above any other; he was buried elsewhere at his death in 1786 and returned here only in 1991, when German reunification allowed his wish to be honoured. The tour continues to the western end of the 290-hectare park and the Neues Palais — the 300-room palace Frederick built immediately after the Seven Years' War to signal that Prussia had not been impoverished by the conflict.