Frederick the Great built Sanssouci in Potsdam as a summer retreat. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff designed it, and construction ran from 1745 to 1747. A dispute over the site got him dismissed in 1746, and Jan Bouman finished the work. The style is Rococo, labeled Frederician Rococo for the king's personal influence.
It is a single-story villa with ten principal rooms, set on a terraced hill. The vineyard terraces, ordered on August 10, 1744, hold 168 glazed niches for figs and vines. The oval Marble Hall, in white and gold, has paired Carrara marble columns. Voltaire stayed in Potsdam from 1750 to 1753 and gave his name to a guest room.
Frederick's casket was interred in the crypt on the terrace in 1991, as he had willed. The park's main avenue runs 1.6 miles (2.5 km) from a 1748 obelisk to the New Palace. UNESCO listed the site in 1990, and the palaces draw over two million visitors a year.
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