Belvedere auf dem Klausberg

The Belvedere auf dem Klausberg is a building in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, Germany that is open to the public.ArchitectureGeorg Christian Unger based his plans on a drawing by the Italian archeologist Francesco Bianchini from his 1738 volume Del Palazzo de' Cesari. Biancini had tried to reconstruct the Imperial Palace on the Palatine Hill in ancient Rome. The only sources he used were ancient writers, parts of the ruins, and an inscription of a building with fountains on a coin he found in the Nero-erected market marcelum magnum in Rome. The ancient gold piece shows an enclosed room, an open rotunda with a vaulted ceiling, and attached on both sides to open walkways.Exterior structureLike the Fountain temple of the ancients, the Belvedere also has a round floor plan. The enclosed building is surrounded on the lower level by a platform with twenty ionic columns. They are supported in turn with twenty corinthian columns on the upper level. This column ring opens to the west and to the east through balcony-like attachments.The dome over the vaulted ceiling is decorated with the statues of twenty figures of divinities made out of sandstone, which were finished in different sculptors' workshops. Through the eight arched french doors, light enters the building's two rooms, one on top of the other. The upper room can only be reached by the stairs, while the lower room has a door between the stairs on the platform.