Frederick the Great sketched the elevation of Sanssouci himself, and insisted the building stay one storey high so he could step from his study straight onto the terrace. His architect, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, argued for a raised podium that would let the palace be admired from the parkland below. The king refused. Knobelsdorff was right about the sightline and wrong about the client, and the quarrel ended their working relationship. The result, built between 1745 and 1747, is a single-storey summer residence of eleven principal rooms perched above six terraced vineyard steps cut into a south-facing sand hill. Glazed niches once sheltered figs and vines; the terraces still curve in a shallow arc toward the fountain basin. The name — sans souci, without care — was carved above the central bay in the king's own French, the language he preferred to German. He is buried on the topmost terrace, beside his greyhounds, under a plain slab that went unmarked for two centuries. The palace matters now partly because it survived. Potsdam's Old Town was gutted by bombing in April 1945; the park, two kilometres west, came through largely intact and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1990 as part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin. That proximity is why a potsdam half day walking tour from berlin works at all: Sanssouci Park, the Chinese House, the Neues Palais and the Dutch Quarter sit within a compact walkable radius reached in under an hour by regional train. Shorter Potsdam Sanssouci guided walks have become the default format for visitors on a single Berlin day. Inside, the Rococo is unusually restrained. The oval Marble Hall borrows its dome from the Pantheon. The Concert Room, where Frederick played flute sonatas beneath gilt stucco spiderwebs and trailing vines by Johann August Nahl, is the most photographed interior in Brandenburg. Voltaire's guest room carries carved wooden monkeys and parrots, added after the philosopher's stormy three-year residency ended in 1753. The Bildergalerie next door, completed in 1764, is the oldest surviving purpose-built museum building in Germany. Single entry to the palace is 14 EUR per person, and the state palace foundation admits timed groups through rooms that were never designed for crowds — hence the felt overshoes, the metered flow, and the reason most potsdam half day walking tour from berlin tickets are sold against fixed departure slots rather than open entry.