Neptune Grotto

The Neptune's Grotto in the Potsdam Sanssouci park was built on the east side of the area in the course of planning many water features. On behalf of Frederick the Great made ​​Georg Wenceslaus von Knobelsdorff the draft that came in the years 1751-1757 to execution. The Grottierarbeiten and the sculptural decoration took over in 1754, the sculptor Johann Peter Benkert.

Plant

Built out of white marble and pink Silesian garden architecture was crowned with Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, two naiads and two tritons. The 1760 completed by Benckert marble sculpture of Neptune was probably based on a model of the sculptor Georg Franz Ebenhech, which was originally commissioned to make the job for health reasons but could not execute. On both sides of the grotto cascaded shells were attached, should flow down over the Havel water. From a technical ignorance of the experiments, however, did not work and only reach almost one hundred years later, at the time of Frederick William IV after the construction of the pump house with the help of steam power.

The cave room adorned Benckert with rock crystal geodes from the resin and Silesia as well as coral and shells from Holland. This decoration was changed in 1840 to 1842 as part of a restoration by colorful shells and festoons made ​​of porcelain flowers and the input provided with an iron grating. A Venus de Medici in the cave room and two tritons sideways in front of the grotto are no longer preserved. The Venus was built around 1850 with a renewed restoration work by the group The resourceful Jubal teaches children carve flutes, from the workshop of sculptor Potsdam and terracotta manufacturer Wilhelm Koch ( 1815-1889 ), replaced. After a gilded Venus, which is detectable in the cave from 1907 to 1945, stands there today one of the former eight large marble mussels from the 1751-1762 to the designs of Knobelsdorffstraße built, but in 1797 due to disrepair broken marble colonnade of the " Rehgartens " the park Sanssouci, which was also part of Frederick's time to program the water games.

Renovation work on the Neptune's Grotto

Shell Mosaic on the cave ceiling

Large conch from the broken marble colonnade

Rehabilitation

The cave is to be renovated by the year 2018, which is estimated to cost € 3.5 million.