Instagram Live Tour on Palace Day 2021 through the Grounds of Charlottenburg Palacewith Palace Manager Rudolf G. Scharmann

#SaveTheDate: To commemorate Palace Day 2021 and this year’s motto “People”, palace director Rudolf G. Scharmann invites you to join him in Charlottenburg Palace Garden on 19 July 2021. The 5 pm tour will be streamed in real-time on Instagram, directly on the @SPSGmuseum account, making it possible for users to participate live.

To commemorate the 211th anniversary of the death of Queen Luise of Prussia on 19 Juli 1810, the tour begins at her mausoleum. It continues through a landscape design section in the palace garden and concludes on the Luiseninsel (Luise’s Island) named after her.

Queen Luise of Prussia (1776‒1810) remains the most popular woman in the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty. She may be counted among the extraordinary “people”, which this year’s Palace Day motto recalls. A beloved wife at the side of King Frederick William III, mother of seven surviving children, including two future rulers, this queen was self-confident enough to negotiate with Napoleon on Prussia’s behalf, even though her efforts were unsuccessful. Her premature death on 19 July 1810 brought about an enduring myth that lasted into the 20th century.

At the end of a dark path, lined with fir trees, on the grounds at Charlottenburg Palace, the monarch had a mausoleum erected for his late wife ‒ who died young, at only 34 years old. Architect Heinrich Gentz was commissioned to build a small structure, based on the mourning widower’s ideas and sketches, with a gabled front supported by four Doric columns. Christian Daniel Rauch’s sepulchre monument for the queen ‒ a masterpiece of 19th-century German sculpture made from Carrara marble from 1811 to 1814 ‒ originally stood alone in the interior. Luise is not represented as deceased but rather as if she were sleeping in a very natural repose, and at the same time, Rauch’s figure is majestically idealized. Although the building is now closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Instagram live tour format allows viewers to gain exclusive insights into this small structure that would not otherwise be possible.

Join palace director Rudolf G. Scharmann on his tour to and inside the mausoleum, through a section of the garden that is now a nature reserve and ultimately to Luiseninsel, the queen’s namesake.

How can you participate in the tour?

1) You need to have an Instagram account.

2) Follow our account: https://www.instagram.com/SPSGmuseum.

3) Join the live tour ‒ on a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer.