Oranienburg Palace, Baroque palace in Oranienburg, Germany

Oranienburg Palace is a Baroque Schloss in Oranienburg, built from 1651 to 1655 by Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau on the site of an older hunting lodge, with Johann Gregor Memhardt as architect. Its H-shaped plan combines the former hunting lodge in the central block with north rear wings and pavilions added from 1689 by Johann Arnold Nering and later Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe. The white-walled, red-tiled complex encloses a gravel courtyard open on one side, and the main front wing has a triangular pediment and pillared entrance porch.

Around 1551 Elector Joachim II replaced the medieval castle on the Havel island with a hunting lodge; its Renaissance structure survives inside today's central block. In 1650 Frederick William gave the Bötzow estate to his wife Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau, and from 1651 to 1655 Johann Gregor Memhardt built the Dutch-classical palace, renamed Oranienburg in 1652. From 1689 their son Frederick III had it enlarged in Italian and French Baroque forms, with Nering and later Eosander von Göthe adding wings and a second courtyard.

The palace was commissioned by a princess from the House of Orange-Nassau and carries clear traces of Dutch design in its balanced rooms. Visitors can see today how the architecture reflects the connection between Brandenburg and the Netherlands.

The palace is now a museum of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, displaying Baroque handicrafts and paintings, some tied to its former residents. The grounds lie southwest of the building, where Louise Henriette's walled pleasure garden once stood. The entrance portal of 1690 by Johann Arnold Nering, flanked by toscan column pairs and crowned by the allegorical figures Autumn and Summer, marks the approach.

The palace is one of four German palaces named after the House of Orange, built for four sisters from that house. The other three are Oranienstein near Diez, Oranienbaum in Anhalt and Oranienhof near Bad Kreuznach, of which only the last no longer survives.