Belvedere on the Pfingstberg, Palace in Nördliche Vorstädte, Germany

The Belvedere on the Pfingstberg is a palace of pale beige stone whose two 25-metre towers, modelled on the Casino of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, flank a three-arched colonnade with a balcony holding three bronze horses. A triple-arched portico and wide stone staircase lead in. Behind, colonnades and double staircases enclose a courtyard with a water basin.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV sketched the design after the Casino of the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, which he had visited at 33 on his first trip to Italy. Ludwig Persius, Friedrich August Stüler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse built the twin towers from 1847 to 1852, and after a pause Stüler completed the entrance hall and flanking walls for Wilhelm I in 1863. Strokes and the king's death in 1861 left the larger casino project unbuilt.

The hill was renamed Pfingstberg in 1817, when the land already belonged to the royal house. The two tower rooms serve today as a marriage venue, and occasional concerts are staged on a platform in the courtyard's reflecting pool. The Pomonatempel below, Schinkel's first building, erected in 1800, was kept to mask the unfinished plans.

Visitors climb many steps, outside and inside, with the last stretch up a narrow iron spiral staircase in the west tower. The view over Potsdam opens only from the roof platform, since Lenné's dense tree planting blocks it at lower levels. The courtyard reflecting pool also serves as a stage for occasional concerts.

The Belvedere is the only monument in the Potsdam and Berlin World Heritage ensemble run by a private association. Local residents founded the Förderverein Pfingstberg e.V. during the GDR era to save the decaying building; restoration ran from 1988 to 2005, backed by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung and Werner Otto.