Potsdam Palaces 90-Minute Boat Tour on the Havel

Potsdam Harbour and the Tiefer See

The cruise starts at Potsdam harbour, the landing stage beside the Lange Brücke a few minutes on foot from the central station and the old town. From here the boat heads out onto the Tiefer See, the wide stretch of the Havel in front of the city, with the dome of St Nicholas' Church and the rebuilt City Palace behind you and the wooded shore of Babelsberg Park ahead. The first minutes already explain why Potsdam is called a city of lakes: the Havel widens into a chain of lakes here, and almost every royal garden was laid out to face the water.

If you are deciding how to get to the Potsdam boat tour, the harbour is the simplest meeting point in town: trams and buses stop at the Lange Brücke, and it is a short walk from the train. The landing stage has a boarding gate where your ticket is scanned, with seating inside and on the open deck.

Babelsberg Palace and Park

The first great sight is Babelsberg Park, a landscape park of hills and winding paths on the eastern shore. High above the water stands Babelsberg Palace, a neo-Gothic summer residence built from 1835 onwards with battlements, towers and bay windows inspired by English castles. Along the shore you also see the Flatow Tower, a tall look-out modelled on a medieval gate, and the smaller court buildings that served the summer household. The park is best appreciated from the lake, because its designers planted the slopes so that each palace appears in a framed view.

Visitors often ask whether Babelsberg Park is worth visiting on foot as well: it is, and this Babelsberg boat view helps you choose which paths to walk later. On the cruise the boat sails close enough for photographs of the palace terraces before turning towards the Glienicke Bridge.

Glienicke Bridge and the Former Border

The boat then passes under the Glienicke Bridge, the green steel bridge of 1907 that links Potsdam with Berlin. From 1949 to 1989 the middle of this bridge was the border between East Germany and West Berlin, and it became known across the world when captured agents were exchanged on it during the Cold War. Seen from the water, the two halves still differ slightly in colour, because each side repainted its own part. The commentary explains the exchanges and how the lakes themselves were patrolled as a border strip.

Beyond the bridge opens the Jungfernsee, and here the former border ran straight across the water. Sailing along it is the most memorable part of a Glienicke Bridge tour, with Glienicke Park and its classical villa on the Berlin side and the walls of the New Garden on the Potsdam side.

Sacrow and the Church of the Redeemer

On the northern shore of the Jungfernsee the boat approaches the village of Sacrow with one of the most photographed buildings of the region: the Church of the Redeemer, built between 1841 and 1844 in the style of an Italian basilica with a free-standing bell tower and arcades that reach right down to the water. For decades it stood in the border strip and could not be used; today it has been restored and its position on a narrow spit of land makes it look as if it were floating. Behind it lies Sacrow Castle and its park, part of the same UNESCO landscape.

A short distance further the boat passes Peacock Island, a nature reserve where peacocks roam freely among meadows and ancient oaks. The white castle on its tip, built in the 1790s to look like a ruined medieval fortress, is a favourite view on every Potsdam boat trip.

The New Garden, Marble Palace and Cecilienhof

The last leg follows the shore of the New Garden, the landscape park between the Jungfernsee and the Heiliger See. Near the water stands Cecilienhof Palace, built between 1913 and 1917 as an English-style country house with brick chimneys and half-timbered gables, the last palace of the Prussian royal family. In the summer of 1945 the heads of government of the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom met here for the Potsdam Conference, and the boat gives you the park-side view of the building where post-war Europe was decided.

Set back on the Heiliger See is the Marble Palace, a red-brick and marble summer residence from the late eighteenth century with a lakeside kitchen built to look like a sunken temple. The commentary points out both palaces and the park's smaller follies before the boat turns back across the Tiefer See to Potsdam harbour.