The Chinese House Sanssouci Park Potsdam, Frederick II the Great palace

The Chinese House (German: Chinesisches Haus) is a garden pavilion in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, Germany. Frederick the Great had it built, about seven hundred metres southwest of the Sanssouci Palace, to adorn his flower and vegetable garden. The garden architect was Johann Gottfried Büring, who between 1755 and 1764 designed the Chinese pavilion in the then-popular style of Chinoiserie, a mixture of ornamental rococo elements and parts of Chinese architecture. The unusually long building time of nine years is attributed to the Seven Years’ War, during which Prussia’s economic and financial situation suffered significantly. Only after the end of the war in 1763 were the chambers inside the Chinese pavilion furnished. As the Chinese House served not only as a decorative piece of garden architecture but also as a setting for small social events, Frederick II the Great ordered the building of a Chinese Kitchen, a few metres south-east of the Chinese House. After a conversion in 1789, only the he