Schloss Bellevue
Schloss Bellevue is a château in the center of Berlin. It has been the principal residence of the German President since 1994. Its name derives from its beautiful view over the Spree river.
Schloss Bellevue, built in 1786, was the first Neoclassical building in Germany, and has three main elements: a central building of 19 bays, with a central pediment supported by Corinthian columns, with wings on either side (the "ladies' wing" and the "Spree wing"). It is surrounded by a park covering 20 hectares.
It served as the official residence of the Crown Prince of Germany until 1918. The treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War was signed here on 3 September 1870.
In the mid-1930s, it was used as a museum of ethnography, before being renovated a guest house for the Third Reich. It was damaged in May 1945, at the end of the Second World War, and refurbished substantially in the 1950s. From 1957, it was a secondary residence of the President of Germany, a pied a terre in Berlin in addition to his primary residence at the Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn. It was refurbished again in 1986/7, and Richard von Weizsäcker moved the primary residence of the President of Germany here in 1994, after the German reunification. It was reconstructed from 2004 to 2005 to remedy defects in earlier renovations. The President of Germany used Schloss Charlottenburg for representative purposes during this period. It became his primary residence again in January 2006.
Source: Wikipedia.org
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