French church, Reformed church building in Potsdam, Germany.
The French Church is an oval domed building modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, with walls 1.65 m thick, a sandstone-clad base and plastered upper walls. Its front has a triangular pediment with a sunburst carving above four columns, two round and two square, framing a wooden double door; the inscription MDCCL sits between the middle columns. Inside, a wooden gallery runs around the room above dark wooden chairs facing a pulpit, under a flat pinkish ceiling.
The church was built in 1752/53 for Potsdam's French Reformed congregation, which traced its origins to the 1685 Edict of Potsdam, when the Great Elector offered Huguenot refugees a home in Prussia. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff designed it, though already seriously ill, and Jan Bouman supervised construction on marshy ground near the Dutch Basin. Karl Friedrich Schinkel renovated the interior in 1832–34, and after wartime damage the dome was secured with a reinforced concrete shell in 1985.
The church takes its name from the French Reformed congregation founded by Huguenots whom the Great Elector invited to Prussia in the 1685 Edict of Potsdam. The plain interior, with benches arranged in a semicircle around the pulpit, follows the Reformed order of worship, in which the sermon stands at the centre. Above the entrance the gilded tetragrammaton YHWН once stood; today the inscription reads MDCCLII.
The church is located at Bassinplatz near the Dutch Quarter and is easily accessible on foot. Visitors should note that the building is mainly open during service times and special visiting hours.
Above the entrance, gilded letters once spelled the tetragrammaton YHWН; today the pediment between the columns reads MDCCLII, the year 1752. The oval interior measures 19.83 by 15.23 metres, and the walls are 1.65 metres thick, faced with sandstone at the base and plastered above.
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